[Proposal/Feedback] Reorganisation/recategorisation of Settings/Preferences

[opusforlife2]

This issue is to collect ideas from the community on how to better organise various settings in the app. For example, #3184 does this for two such settings.

[Stypox]

I am in favour of adding a "fine-tuning" settings section, inside which we could add all of the settings people ask for, and they wouldn't be cluttering the ui and reducing accessibility.

[opusforlife2]

I think it is also worth separating and demarcating service-specific settings, because an increasing number of services would result in a jumble of settings. For example, download resolutions are different between Youtube, MediaCCC and Peertube, both for video and audio, yet the existing setting caters only to Youtube.

[Stypox]

The existing setting shuld do the same for every service 🤔

[opusforlife2]

MediaCCC, for example, has a weird resolution of 576p, and Peertube has 300p. Soundcloud currently has only one bit rate for MP3's, but when it gets Opus support, then we'll need a bit rate selector for that. Plus I think we should have a default bit rate selector for Youtube audio playback as well.

[opusforlife2]

Feed-related settings could be grouped into their own menu, when things like auto-refresh and pull to refresh are added.

[SameenAhnaf]

I am in favour of adding a "fine-tuning" settings section, inside which we could add all of the settings people ask for, and they wouldn't be cluttering the ui and reducing accessibility.

Are you talking about this type of sub-section to show related settings on each section of Settings? If yes, we should also consider 'Search' on the top right of settings separately. This search should not interfere with browsing history though.

Screenshot

MediaCCC, for example, has a weird resolution of 576p, and Peertube has 300p. Soundcloud currently has only one bit rate for MP3's, but when it gets Opus support, then we'll need a bit rate selector for that. Plus I think we should have a default bit rate selector for Youtube audio playback as well.

Needless to say, smashing all settings, subscriptions and playlists into the same UI makes no sense. Peertube, YouTube and Bandcamp all platforms are different.

Often, I get confused what exactly I am browsing. Sometimes, I leave the app from YouTube and share Peertube links later. Guess what? Minimizing the player keeps the status bar red. Thanks to the absence of top bar on main player. I can never know what I am browsing.

Thinking all of these bugs, #5809 was open. So, separate 'Settings' for separate platforms should be added whenever the issue is solved.

[opusforlife2]

#6895 made me realise the Video and Audio settings menu is getting quite cluttered. I think the Behaviour subsection could be moved to its own top level menu in Settings.

[SameenAhnaf]

It shouldn't be hard, I think. Just replace external player buttons into video info (suggested in #3642) and keep gesture controls into a 'Player Gestures' menu. 'Player Gestures' menu could be hidden on Android TV.

Current layout	Recommended layout

[litetex]

Whoops didn't find this issue while searching for it (searching through 1000 issues with the search key "settings" returns 214 results).

Anyway here the things from #7367 (duplicate):

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What feature do you want?

The settings should be reworked/regrouped.

The following should be reworked (IMO):

• Video and Audio:
  • Contains many player settings. Maybe add a "Player area" instead?
  • Behavior should get it's own settings area.
• Appearance: Maybe introduce groups of settings like currently in video and audio ("Theme")?
• Content:
  • Can be divided into:
    • language/country settings
    • "Services" (YT: Age restricted content, PeerTube: instances)
    • "Video details/data" (show comments, show next/similar videos, show description)
    • Import/Export (maybe own area)
  • Extract Feed into it's own area (also consider UI-Redesign #7047)
• Other stuff that may got introduced in the meantime (like New streams notifications #2335)

Also consider if all settings are still required. Maybe some can be removed?

What would also be nice - but it should/can be done in another PR/issue:

• A kind of registry like about:config in FF would be great to enable/disable experimental things
  
• Make it possible to search through the settings. So that users find them faster.

Why do you want this feature?

A settings rework is long overdue.
Many settings get added but no one ever thinks about reorganizing them.

See also #2335 (comment)

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Plan:

• Refactor/Regroup settings
• Consider making the debug settings (partial) available in the release; This could also de-duplicate some code.
• Add about:config-like view
• Add a search function Made preferences searchable #7586
• Do not use java serialization for settings (insecure + not human readable)

[opusforlife2]

@litetex Is this still on your plate? I could help with working out a new structure.

[litetex]

@opusforlife2
Currently not. It's - at least for me - low prio.