Mastodon: [Feature request] Allowing the user to disable timeline streaming

[koyuawsmbrtn]

There should be an option in the settings menu that lets people disable timeline streaming. It would be extremely helpful for people who follow a bunch of other people and it gets extremely annoying when you interact with the wrong post just because someone just sent another one.

[xerz-one]

Here's an idea, we could use the metaphor of a "pause" button, so when such button is pressed the feed stops and a small counter on top starts listing how many new toots are, maybe count up to say "99+", maybe allow a setting for such counter to not count boosts. The button will remain enabled until it's clicked again, then the timeline will be refreshed properly. There could also be a "slow down" button and/or slider where the display of toots could be delayed, so toots go into a display stack and are scheduled to appear at a period (say, 750ms) between each other - if the pause button is disabled with this setting, the feed will resume but at a slower pace instead of loading all the new toots at once (the pause button's counter should reflect this), and if there are too many toots awaiting either allow the user to quickly disable the slowdown period (by e.g. having a readily available slider) or have a setting where the timeline is fully refreshed when the unread counter goes past a specific amount of toots.

This should be implemented per client, and probably not be made part of the Mastodon API, as synchronization between devices is probably counterproductive.

[koyuawsmbrtn]

@espectalll yep, good idea

[realityfabric]

Is this a duplicate of #7913? They're both tied to the same PR (#9984).

[koyuawsmbrtn]

@realityfabric #7913 would be rather the duplicate of this issue. There was no further work on PR #9984 so I would drag that attention there. cc @Gargron