Chatterino2: 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: https://github.com/Chatterino/chatterino2/issues/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]

:+1: 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. :thinking:

[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.