Clean Up Settings

[leon-richardt]

What should be added?

Devise a way to clean up and organize Chatterino's "Settings" section. I mean this issue to be a place to collect ideas on how to go about this. What follows is a list of initial ideas.

Basic & Advanced Section

Divide settings into a "Basic" and "Advanced" section, shoving obscure and rarely used options into the "Advanced" section. Sections could be divided by having separate tabs, for example.

For example, Chromium uses this approach:

Screenshot

"Developer Options"-style Settings

(Originally proposed by @Supinic.)

In order to access these settings, users would have to check a box first. Somewhat similar to the first approach, however it hides more obscure settings behind an additional barrier.

For example, Android uses this approach:

Screenshot

Hide obscure settings altogether

This is the most radical approach but I will mention it anyway as it might inspire some other solution.

Remove obscure options from the GUI altogether and expose them only via editing the configuration file directly. This is probably a hassle to migrate users to though. (And thus very unlikely to be implemented.)

Why should it be added?

Chatterino's settings are getting increasingly cluttered as the application grows in functionality. A search bar exists to quickly navigate to a setting but still, discoverability of potentially interesting features is hurt by having to sift through many irrelevant options.

At the same time, the average user likely only cares about a small subset of settings available to them. To demonstrate, I compiled a quick list of configuration options that I think are irrelevant to most users:

List of rarely used settings

• "Show which channels are live in tabs"
• "Show input when it's empty"
• "Show message length while typing"
• "Timestamp format"
• The "R9K" section
• The "Cache" section
• The "AppData" section
• "Restart on crash"
• "Use libsecret/KWallet/Gnome keychain to secure passwords"
• "Automatically close user popup when it loses focus"
• "Enable experimental IRC support"
• "Show unhandled IRC messages"

(This is not meant to be a complete list but rather a demonstration that there are many rarely changed settings.)

I am looking forward to other suggestions!

[fourtf]

I would like to see the "Basic & Advanced Section" added to the general settings.

[zneix]

How about also adding some kind of guide through some settings for new / less advanced users to Chatterino's wiki / docs?

[leon-richardt]

How about also adding some kind of guide through some settings for new / less advanced users to Chatterino's wiki / docs?

Definitely a good idea, although it is probably more appropriate to discuss this over at Chatterino/wiki. (Also cc: #184)

[gempir]

I feel like without user tracking you can't just assume options aren't used. I personally use atleast 4 of the options and I have heard of other users using some of the options.

So removing the from the GUI is bad IMO, rather hide them with Advanced or under Developer Options which I really like because most new users like streamers are overwhelmed with the options at first.

[pajlada]

👍 to Basic & Advanced Section

[leon-richardt]

I feel like without user tracking you can't just assume options aren't used. I personally use atleast 4 of the options and I have heard of other users using some of the options.

Yeah, that will probably be the most tricky part of the change. I'm not sure what the best way to classify settings into "Basic" and "Advanced" would be (without resorting to user-tracking).

Maybe some kind of poll among users? Feels a little "invasive" to me. And answers would probably skewed towards dedicated/power users anyway. 🤔

[dnsge]

Idea:

For message options, what if the settings menu had a message preview that updated as you changed the settings?
For example, a few messages in a ChannelView right next to settings like "Visible Badges", "Emotes", "Separate with lines", "Alternate background color", "Timestamp format", etc.

[jupjohn]

I'd like to expand on some of the previous comments with a slightly modified layout:

• Basic settings: anything that most people would probably care about (e.g. show badges,
• Advanced settings: slightly less used, but probably should still be changeable in-app
• Settings file-only: settings that are intended primarily for developers/"power users" (i.e. audio backend, chat send protocol, most of the time gates)

I don't think we have a file watcher for settings in place, but if this approach was used I'd recommend adding one and potentially a popup to state that settings have changed.

[Mm2PL]

Settings file-only: settings that are intended primarily for developers/"power users" (i.e. audio backend, chat send protocol, most of the time gates)

I'm highly against having more settings file only settings. Editing them is a nightmare. IMO only settings that should get a treatment like that are time gates for which we have helix and no other option. And even these have problems: they have had GUI controls, we probably should expect users to change them, taking away that GUI makes it way harder to reset them or debug behaviour caused by them.

[jupjohn]

@Mm2PL that's a fair point around removing controls that users may "depend on;" I guess I'm only talking about super niche settings that regular users wouldn't want to change (which is subjective, eh.)

With neri's tinegate cleanup I can only see a few items that I'd class as meaningless to the average user. Perhaps a "developers" subsection of advanced would suffice.