Jitsi-meet: Raise hand icon missing in iOS and Android on toolbar line.

[clecap]

Raising and lowering the hand is an important feature in a conferencing solution. The implementation in jitsi is great. However, since the feature is needed often, the button should be accessible more quickly.

In the iOS and Android user interface the button is not on the toolbar line but part of the additional ellipsis / overflow menu.

The feature request is to include a hand icon as part of the toolbar (in the same way as in the desktop UI).

[foss-]

On iOS this has been added in version 20.0.3. It's a bit hidden but works. Select the three dots on the bottom right > More options > Raiser / Lower hand.

[clecap]

We probably are having a misunderstanding here.

I _am actually_ writing in my post that this feature is part of the ellipsis / overflow / three dots / more options menu. That's correct. And it even has been there in version 20.0.0 at least on my iPhone :-)

My suggestion however is to add it as part of the _toolbar_. Open the app. On the right there are the three dots. In the middle there is the red button for "hang up". One to the left there is the microphone button. One to the left there is the chat button. My feature request is to have the raise / lower button as the leftmost button, to the left of the chat button. Here it is missing.

Reasons for this:

1. Consistency of the user interface layout with the web user interface.
2. Raise / lower is an often needed feature and should be accessible faster. Currently it needs a tap on the ellipsis / three dots followed by a scroll of the options menu followed by another tap on the item in the menu. This can be reduced to one tap.
3. We actually have the space for this on the toolbar. Why not use it.

And I would also add another improvement (for the iOS UI as well as the web UI). Changing the one icon (hand filled with white color) into two icons (one as is; the other a hand which is filled with black instead of white). The idea is: A white-filled hand shows the status "my hand is raised" and a black.filled hand shows the status "my hand is lowered". Currently the thumbnails display signs of raised hands, which is good. However it makes it necessary to check with a tiny-tiny-tiny icon and to identify the correct thumbnail belonging to yourself. It would be easier to include this signaling into the icon itself, as we already do it with the microphone icon. And: It comes at now price for screen real estate. While this is a simple hack for the web UI it is not so easy to include this in the app since this is part of the AppStore distribution lifecycle.

[saghul]

Thanks for the report @clecap !

There is no room on the toolbar (try a 4 inch phone), unless you are using a tablet I guess.

Different users may find the different options more important, so we'd end up with a toolbar with 20 options, that just won't work so we have to compromise and make some choices on what to show and what not to.

That said, the sudden spike on users has shown some of our choices anre not great, so we'll be reevaluating a number of things one we get a chance.

[clecap]

Thanks for the comments @saghul and for such a fine system which, in the days of Corona, prove to be very helpful indeed.

I am using it on a 4 inch (ok: 4,7 inch) iPhone 8 and I assume one additional icon might fit in. ;-)

From all the additional options in the options menu there is only one option which you need all the time during a call (which is raise/lower hand). All the other options are more or less one time only options. Thus the danger of "I also want feature XYZ on the toolbar" is pretty small. Moreover, this could be open for user configuration in the settings.

I have another suggestion: The iPhone and Android UI currently have shadow modes. With a tap you activate the toolbar buttons and a slight shadow on the top and the bottom of the screen appears. In the bottom shadow, the toolbar is embedded. However, the top shadow area only displays the name of the room but leaves ample space for other UI elements, which we currently do not use.

[stale[bot]]

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