Show ALL classic emails (no requests)

Is there any chance this feature could be implemented or any expected timeframe for it? Maybe we could make a crowdfund to support making this one as a priority? I would go for it!! What about others?

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I do not think it is necessary to add configuration for this, if the user selects “All” in the configuration of interaction with mail, then allow the entry of all the emails without so much obstacles

I must clarify something, despite having a particular interest in this function, my main interest is based on the usability of DeltaChat, unlike many of you I manually install Delta to many people and I can see this feature as a brake for many users non-technological, in fact, I have found users who find out with me when I check their mobile, of requests that have more than one month, and I have to remind them to check this frequently.

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Yes, I want to use DeltaChat in our organization instead of Spike and it would surely ease its adoption to novice users. Also, I use DC on 3 devices and it bothers me to allow the same contact three times…
If I will get under spam attack, I can change the behaviour back or use spam filter of mail server…

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“Contact request” UI seems to have been designed this way in the late 2019/early 2020 and has not changed much since then.

Typical problem on Android is when you receive a notification for contact request and click “Mark read” to dismiss the notification. You may later vaguely remember that you have seen this message somewhere, but can’t recall which chat it was. On the chatlist screen it is nowhere to find, because it went into “contact requests”. There is no such problem on Desktop because it doesn’t have “Mark read” option in the notification, at least for me.

If you remember to check “Contact requests” menu item later, it is not easy to click through all the messages there. You open the “contact requests” chat, click on one message, make a decision and get back to the chatlist screen automatically. To process another request, you need to click “contact requests” item in the menu again.

There were some discussions about redoing “Contact requests” on IRC with @Hocuri and @r10s when dc_msg_get_real_chat_id() was introduced. @Simon also wanted to introduce a badge with a number of unread contact requests so you can check how many contact requests are there without having to enter the “Contact requests” chat, this will require to add support for DC_CHAT_ID_DEADDROP (internal name for “Contact requests”) to ChatId::get_msg_cnt.

Long term, there is an idea to get rid of “contact requests” chat and replace it with a “contact requests” chatlist similar to “archived chats”. The “Contact requests” item should then stay at the top of your chatlist as long as there is at least one unread message in any of the “contact requests” chats.

Edit: there was also a related discussion on GitHub: tweak contact requests · Issue #1896 · deltachat/deltachat-android · GitHub

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Something that occurs to me without any user interface change, allow a previously confirmed contact to open directly in the chat, currently if there is no open chat with that contact, the message goes to contact request, the correct thing in my humble opinion is that if there has already been a previous iteration with that contact, do not send the contact request and open the chat directly.

This would improve things a lot

After some peer-to-peer and IRC discussions, the plan is to get rid of the “contact requests” chat and menu item completely, and simply drop contact requests as chats in the chatlist, but with a “[New]” badge, similar to how archived chats are marked with “[Archived]”.

Such chats will not generate notifications and generally act as muted chats. When opened, you can read messages in them, but no read receipts will be sent. The message composition area at the bottom of the screen will be replaced with buttons “Block” and “Accept”, so you can’t send messages until you make a decision. No “Later” option, you can simply go back if you don’t want to decide yet.

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thanks for summing up, @link2xt. i’d like to add that this approach also solves other issues we have with contact requests.

  • it is hard to keep track of contact-requests as all messages appear in the same chat
  • one has to perform contact requests one after the other, this is mitigated by #1898, however it is not solved.
  • no ambiguity on tapping on contact-request messages - “show full message”, enlarge-images etc. work as usual.

finally, less things to explain - we can strike the “contact requests” main menu item :slight_smile:

Honestly I don’t understand why new chats should not generate notifications, I think it is important that when you are contacted for the first time on DC you are notified of the event so you can immediately decide what to do (accept or block the contact and possibly decide whether to mute the chat), otherwise you may not notice the start of a new chat even for long periods and this goes against the idea of having DC as if it were an IM for email.

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@darhma

This is what @r10s proposed in IRC:

but i think, contact request should still not be notified (maybe we can have an option at some point)

I don’t have any opinion on this, for me it’s not that important whether I get contact requests notifications or not. The chat will appear near the top anyway, unless user has a whole screen of pinned chats. This is a tradeoff between potentially missing a new chat or getting annoyed by spam if your spam filter is not so good.

I’ll probably go with whatever is easier to implement first, maybe send notification for new chat once but treat the chat as muted afterwards, and then we can decide on whether an option is needed based on feedback.

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This, in my opinion, could be a good solution

Same for me. It is important to not miss new message/even if it is from unknown person.

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Exactly. I expect Delta Chat to mimic a chat/messenger app as much as it can, e.g. Facebook Messenger, Twitter DM. Unless I explicitly blacklisted/blocked someone or I explicitly disabled messaging from strangers, I expect to receive his/her messages!

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“Contact requests” chat is going to be removed in the next major release:

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Hi, I am trying 1.22.0
The problem remains: no notification for requests.

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I was waiting for this, I’m still hoping (before official release)…

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I think a notification system for chat requests is important to at least partially achieve compatibility with emails (the ability to add more attachments and notification of receipt of new emails on inactive accounts would still be missing).
The cases in which they are necessary are in the workplace: for example business, it often happens that companies receive requests from new contacts, or from a person who is looking for a job and leaves his CV to many companies and therefore can receive many (hopefully) requests for a job interview appointment or CV integration requests.
There could be many other examples and I think that already in these two cases it is more important to notify contact requests even if spam, rather than losing a job opportunity.

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This could (should) be the solution we are waiting.

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This happened to me again, I received a contact request and didn’t see it until several hours later.

I only use DC for chats and not for all emails and the fact that contact requests are not notified is creating a lot of problems for me.

I think DC is a very good application and for some time now I have decided to use it as a replacement for whatsapp with friends and family. For this reason I have publicized it a lot and I must say that it works well… once you realize you have a contact request and can accept it!!!

Why do I think it is critical that contact requests are notified?

  1. If I tell a friend to try DC and then they try to contact me and I respond after half a day or even a whole day, the first thought they will have after a while is that the app doesn’t work.

  2. If the problem is about spam when using DC with “normal” email the current behavior seems to me to create more problems than it solves:
    Suppose I get 10 spam emails a day. If I am notified during the day as they arrive I can just open DC and block the contact immediately without wasting time, but if I am not notified and for one day I do not receive or write messages and then I do not use the app the next day I have to check 20+ contact requests and decide whether to block them or not, with the result that the spam problem is not solved but I may have missed important contact requests.

I understand that spam is a problem and that it can be annoying to receive many spam notifications but in this case the problem is upstream and if you receive so much spam maybe it would be a good idea to change email address and provider.

It’s not logical, in my opinion, to think that you have to open the app to see if there are any contact requests, and apparently it’s not logical for all the other existing email clients and messaging apps either.

I was hoping to see notifications for contact requests implemented with the latest update, now I’m hoping to see them implemented in the next one because I personally think that’s currently the biggest usability issue with the app.

If necessary I can open an issue on github, but in the meantime I hope to get some feedback here since the discussion had already started and I hope to have contributed constructively with this post, trying to make it clear what are the reasons for the request.

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