Meshcentral: Improvement suggestion- customize privacy bar

[PathfinderNetworks]

I was playing around with the new Privacy bar option. I notice the default setting is that it shows the MeshCentral username as who is controlling the device. I'd like to change this to something else as my MeshCentral username is not anything any of my clients would recognize as being me (nor do I want anyone knowing my MeshCentral username in the first place). I'd like to be able to enter my own name and business name- so they know, without any doubt, who it is connecting to their device should I choose to use the privacy bar option.
Maybe have an option in the 'My Users' area where we can customize or setup a 'profile' for each user and the privacy bar (and other features where it interacts with the EU- such as the chat function) can use the data we enter in the profile?

[Ylianst]

I agree, this is a good ask. For others reading this, "EU" likely stands for "End User".

[MailYouLater]

You have a good point about not wanting to publicize your MeshCentral user name, as that puts the remote user one step closer to gaining access to all of your devices. They'd still have to get your password, but why publicize the username unnecessarily. It would be nice if you could (optionally) enter a name during user creation just for this purpose, and the toolbar should default to showing the name instead of the username.

The user's real name (either Full Name, or First Name and Last Name) should be editable after clicking the user in the "My Users" section.

[PathfinderNetworks]

I agree, this is a good ask. For others reading this, "EU" likely stands for "End User".

You are correct, I mean to say End User when I say EU (that shorthand comes from a tech group I'm part of). ;-)

[Ylianst]

I just published MeshCentral v0.4.5-r where can set "desktopPrivacyBarText" in the domain section, for example:

  "domains": {
    "": {
      "title": "Server Title",
      "desktopPrivacyBarText": "This is a test: {0}"
    }
  }

This will be used as the privacy bar text for that domain. The "{0}" is replaced with the comma separated list of user names that have active desktop sessions, but you don't have to include {0} in the string. So you can just set "This desktop is being managed remotely" and that will work.

Feedback appreciated,
Ylian

[MailYouLater]

For improved usability, I'd recommend that something more descriptive than {0} be used, e.g. {users}, and it would nice if there were some other options too, e.g. {userfullnames} (once full names can be added), {timeelapsed}, etc..

[Ylianst]

Yes, I was thinking of {users}, until I realized that there is chance that {users} would get translated into other languages and break. I guess it's not a huge deal, you just have to know not to translate it.

[OutbackMatt]

This works for me

[OutbackMatt]

The privacy bar appears in different sized text on different screen resolutions.

On some screens I can easily read all of my text, on other screens some of the text is truncated as it doesn't all fit.

It would be good to have the text in this bar set to use HTML, and then colour and fonts can set, and relative (%) size can be used on text.

[Ylianst]

Arg. So the privacy bar is not HTML, it's a window title and so, the color and font is mostly set by the OS. Bryan could look into improving it, but it's not going to be a short term thing. There is no way that is going to be HTML, the alternative is for us to manually "paint" the bar but it's a bunch of work.

[veitw]

Hi @Ylianst,

great enhancement, thank you very much!

I noticed that the privacy bar, unlike both consent window and toasts, does not support UTF-8 characters. Is this on purpose/necessity, or is it an error and will be corrected in a future release?

Best regards,
// Veit

[krayon007]

Hi @Ylianst,

great enhancement, thank you very much!

I noticed that the privacy bar, unlike both consent window and toasts, does not support UTF-8 characters. Is this on purpose/necessity, or is it an error and will be corrected in a future release?

Best regards,
// Veit

This was a bug... I just fixed it, and tested with chinese characters... It will be in the next agent update.

[krayon007]

Well, I fixed it on windows... Looking into linux right now...

[krayon007]

Ok, Linux is fixed now too...

[veitw]

@krayon007 : Thank you very much! :)