I’ve just logged into a Gmail account I own and have changed the setting to show only chats (like I do for other Gmail accounts already installed which show correctly) and I have a list of emails most of which have a Request label, some of which have a green tick and some have no label or tick.
I don’t understand why this is looking different from other Gmail accounts I have in DC. The green tick is on emails that include a previous email conversation but also ones where there wasn’t.
Maybe the emails were downloaded before you changed the setting? This setting only affects future emails received and does not hide any messages already shown.
We lately changed the default to be “Show Classic E-Mails”. This means that as soon as you login, some classic emails will be downloaded. You can archive the chats you don’t want to see, if you have changed the setting now then no new emails will pop up.
I don’t know how that could be possible - “default setting” means “the option that’s used if the user doesn’t change it”. If you want another option, you need to change the setting at “Chats and Media → Show Classic E-Mails” and archive/delete some chat that already popped up.
Hi,
at first let me thank you for your awesome work and this wonderful piece of software, used it for years now and like it a lot.
But, I recently stopped spreading deltachat in my community because of this new default. I can only change the setting (Only for Chats) after accountcreation, which leads to a 100 requests in my Chat overview. I would also prefer “Only Chat” as default, because the tool is not explainable in my community with such a beginning experience. Please change at least to a Button of choice at accountcreation.
I think the setting should be a part of initial configuration on the login screen. It is technically possible to add a setting on the same screen where you enter login and password the first time without changing anything in the core. Otherwise we have to revert the setting, because
hi @pabl0, what is wrong with having some chats at the start? isn’t it actually good users can install the app and jump right to continue their existing conversations in their inbox? users have complained in the past and asked for a way to load conversations from existing inbox, IMHO not loading the inbox was an anti-feature, because any other email client would load your inbox, and having some content on start doesn’t hurt, on the contrary, having an empty chat list and “no contacts to talk to, no one of my contacts use delta chat” is a blocker for new Delta Chat users, worse case if you don’t want to to receive non-chats messages you can ignore or delete the chats, you can opt-out, there was no option to opt-in loading the chats.
Also it must be noticed that “chats only” is a harmful option, first you break the normal federation of email and kind of force your contacts to use DC if they want to reach you, also you might lose emails unintentionally if a classic email user you are chatting with in Delta Chat starts a new email instead of replying to one of your previous emails, then you are forced to use a classic email app side by side with Delta Chat, which has issues (like notifications for self-messages in the classic email app) and in general it is recommended a dedicated email account for Delta Chat instead of using a classic email app the same time, that is why receiving all email by default and being able to use Delta Chat as your only email app is a must.
That said, I see no issue with an option at configuration time, but the default should be showing all emails, and maybe even explain or warn about the pitfalls of setting “chats only”
Hi @adbenitez ,
for me deltachat is a chat app. For mails I use thunderbird. The big advantages are decentralization and encrypted messaging out of the box. I dont want to use it as emailclient. No problem for me to set it up the way i want to use it. But at the moment, you cant set it up without all your mails(contacts) in the beginning chat tab. And even when you change the setting to Deltachatfolder only, the chat tab is full with contacts like paypal for example and businessmailcontacts even spamcontacts (probably because of bad mailmanagement of my buddy).
if you want to use it for chats only, why would you use your normal email account where you receive a lot of classic email?
that only causes issues, and unnecessary work receiving and checking inbox just to see “oh just another classic email, ignore it” causing unnecessary battery usage, it is better to use a dedicate email account for chatting then, and then the default “show all emails” is no issue since the new account will be empty.
As I mentioned in my previous message, using delta chat and classic email app at the same time while handling only chats on Delta Chat, you will receive all emails and chats in your classic email client so it is more of a hack.
If i want to use it for chats only, why should i use a dedicated email account. I thought there is the folder Deltachat for. Anyhow, if there are any reasons for the default setting, fine. But for the Chat Only with one mailaccount faction it would very helpful to have the option at first setup or a refresh button to remove the 100 Chataccounts from the overview afterwards.
Thinking about it, my favorite solution to this would be to immediately hide (or delete with a warning) classical emails as soon as you set “Show classical emails” to “No”, because this would also help users understand what this feature actually does. Currently, there is no immediate feedback for the user after changing this setting.
While we could add an advanced setting in the login screen, this wouldn’t benefit many users since most of them won’t find it.
Also, many thanks to everyone giving feedback here - even if lot of the feedback stays unaddressed because we don’t have enough developers to implement everything, it’s still very important to get a feeling for what the users think, and also to be able to prioritize what we work on based on this feedback.
Please revert the default to show Chat-only or provide a choice to set during account set up before classical emails are downloaded to the client. If anyone wants to use DC for classical email they can change the setting thereafter. Manually Archiving hundresds of downloaded with current default is not feasable. Hiding therafter still means previous unneded downloading. Deleting (with warning) is not acceptible (unless deleted only locally). Current workaround is to install an old version (only easy to do with a PC) with default set to Chat-only and then upgrade or restore from backup. This adds unnecessary complexity for no reason whatsoever and instead of promoting the app makes it unusable for innteded purposes.
If the problem is downloading old messages,
maybe we can disable existing download of existing messages:
Then you can configure Delta Chat and switch the setting immediately.
“Download existing messages” setting can then be put into advanced configuration settings,
if the user does not find it there is not much harm.
From this thread it looks for me that the real problem is this setting,
and it was not a problem before as usually users had no chat messages before setting up Delta Chat
and did not notice that existing messages are downloaded.
“Show Classic E-Mails” is still the default for new accounts, but if you switch to “No, chats only” immediately after account setup, you will have no non-chat messages downloaded.
The change will get into next releases. You can already test the fix by downloading the latest nightly Android build. The link to Android nightly builds is at the bottom of https://get.delta.chat/ page.
Trying to understand the “immediately” concept. Is there a delay, which prevents immediate download session initiation upon account setup? How much time is available to make the settings chage to prevent this “junk” traffic of Classic emails? Why not simply revert to a previous default which worked well and give clients ability to chose preferred use mode for the app?
There is no special delay. Delta Chat will not download old classic emails, but you will still receive new classic emails. So all emails that you receive after setting up an account and before changing the setting will appear in Delta Chat.
It’s not clear what was fixed - that’s how it works now. There can be hundreds of classic emails downloaded during change window, at which point “chat” becomes clattered and unusable.
Obviously there is noted negative feedback from multiple implementations. I wonder why not revert the default in next release?