Signal-desktop: Allow for smaller window sizes - smaller overall width, smaller left pane

[hulleyrob]

Can you enable the minimum width of the window on OSX to be at approximately 1cm smaller as this is currently out of line with the minimums of other apps.

Thanks

Rob

[sanspoint]

Seconding this. I can't get the app smaller than 640px wide (non-retina), which is still too dang big for my 1920px wide desktop screen, let alone on my laptop display.

[scottnonnenberg]

What is the right minimum, in pixels?

[hulleyrob]

iMessage seems to have 675px as the minimum so I think it would be good to stick to the same. This would fix my issue.

Currently you are stopping at 700px right?

However this will not fix the other guys issue so he would have to chime in if he wants smaller.

Thanks

Rob

[scottnonnenberg]

@hulleyrob I'm confused - our minimum is already 640px. Maybe you need something smaller than that?

@sanspoint What is the right minimum width for your scenario?

[sanspoint]

I'd have to check, but I know I was able to shrink the old Google Chrome
App window to a much narrower width (I'm estimating about 500 pixels.)

It would also be useful it the contacts sidebar could be resized to be more
narrow so that one can have more conversation space in narrow windows.)

On Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 3:27 PM, Scott Nonnenberg [e-mail]
wrote:

@hulleyrob https://github.com/hulleyrob I'm confused - our minimum is
already 640px. Maybe you need something smaller than that?

@sanspoint https://github.com/sanspoint What is the right minimum width
for your scenario?

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[hulleyrob]

Im using a 27" iMac and the built in screenshot app.

It shows the correct display size (2560x1440) is I shoot the full screen and that your app at its minimum width is 700px (attached with a few px discrepancy of me trying to get it accurate)

Regards

Rob

[scottnonnenberg]

@hulleyrob What version are you running?

[hulleyrob]

1.0.40 on High Sierra 10.13.2 (17C88)

[scottnonnenberg]

@hulleyrob That's an old version - there have been two releases since then, and the latest version is v1.1.0. Are you by chance running it from your Downloads directory? If so, automatic updates won't happen.

[hulleyrob]

I thought it was from the applications folder so I have restarted it, saw the update request go out another restart and now I can resize to the size I am after. Thanks last time I remember updating it was stuck in some sort of loop.

[scottnonnenberg]

@sanspoint Okay, now we're looking for a specific pixel number from you.

[sanspoint]

@scottnonnenberg Okie-dokie, I've taken a screenshot of the Mac app in split view full screen, and the smallest I can get it is 640px wide on a 1920x1280 desktop display. I was able to size down the old Signal Chrome App to 480px in split view, full screen. - 1/3rd my screen width versus 1/4 of my screen width.

[scottnonnenberg]

Thanks. The title of this issue is appropriate: we need more changes than just the minimum window width if we want to allow the app to be useful at 480px wide. At that size, you get just 180px of the conversation view, which is not nearly enough. In fact, I get a horizontal scrollbar in the conversation view until it gets to 360px wide, at 660px for the whole window.

[sanspoint]

Right. I do think the sidebar with the open conversation is rather oversized, to be honest. A lot of wasted space, and I don't necessarily need to see the previous message with that person in the list, for example.

[deutrino]

I would love to see the contacts list collapse and hide the most recent message as the user shrinks the app horizontally. I also don't need the last message in the contacts list, it's nice, but I would prefer a smaller window much of the time.

[joopdo]

Yep same here!

[alixmartineau]

Related to #2510

[benmontour-wf]

Since multiple much newer tickets have been closed and merged into this much older one, which predates the minimum window size change, will this ticket move up in priority?

[Tejeev]

Some of the issues closed and merged were OS agnostic. Are we converting this issue to cover more than OSX or should we reopen/open other issues for Linux and Windows?

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

This issue is for all OSes.

[arekm]

The limit is here:
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/blob/b05650fa4171a70ffd531cc9639037745b5e90fc/main.js#L180-L181

but why it exists? Can't user just use any window size he wants?

For example I would like to not see contact list and have only like 4 lines of my conversation with someone in corner of my monitor. If there was no artificial limit then I could do small window and just move part with contact list outside of visible screen area. But now I can't due to these limits.

[Tejeev]

I agree with arekm. Why does a minimum even exist? It's annoying to say the least that I don't have control of my UI. I'd also vote for a collapsible panels. It all just looks bloated and gets in the way of my work when I just need it in a tiny corner of my screen. I use a 4k monitor and a 1080p vertical side pane and this takes up too much of the side pane and can't be sized small enough to be tucked into a corner of my 4k. I'd like to be able to actually make it the size of the chat panel without the contats and leave it on the side of my screen, similar to the Telegram app (they still have an annoying minimum, but at least the app behavior is a touch more reasonable/adjustable).

[Glitched]

Just want to second a request for a smaller minimum height. Signal's min height is about 50% higher than the stock Messages app on MacOS and it conflicts with my tiling window manager

[benmontour-wf]

Still no fix for the minimum height issue that's been open for over a year, but we have stickers now... so that fixes everything I guess... Is this being worked on Signal team? Why do you see this regression of size as a feature request rather than a bug that was created by another patch?

[alexisvl]

I use this on Linux and often inside the i3 window manager, which ignores Signal's minimum size and forces the window to the size I call for. It remains perfectly usable to sizes much smaller than the one Signal tries to clamp it at, proving we really don't need to debate about the "correct" minimum size - the app degrades gracefully as you continue to shrink it, and I promise, the users are smart enough to stop shrinking it themselves past the point of utility.

Having the sidebar contents shrink first would certainly help, but isn't necessary.

Also scaling the min size with the zoom level is pretty common sense but I can't, so even if I try zooming Signal out with View → Zoom Out so it has more than enough space for its content it won't let me.

What are your users with 1600x900 LCDs supposed to do, buy new computers to use a chat app?

[deutrino]

Try 1366x768. Yes, we still exist.

At this resolution, Signal takes up about 40% of my entire screen.

[MrJoy]

Hrm. So, on macOS 10.15.4 beta (Signal 1.31.0), the smallest I can make the window seems to be 680x550 using the halved coordinate system (I.E. 1360x1100 physical resolution).

That's strange because the commit changing MIN_WIDTH to 640 dates back to 2017 ( https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/pull/1863/commits/b68d27012000c8b578b188888526ce3b3f81649b ) but somehow the app.asar in my build has it set to 680. Is the official build made from a different fork, or with other patches applied?

Personally, I'd like to be able to resize the window to 480x450 (960x600 physical resolution) -- 1/3rd width by 1/2 height on a MacBook Pro screen, when screen scaling is set to the densest setting.

[benmontour-wf]

@scottnonnenberg-signal @gasi-signal @kenpowers-signal
Is there any update on this request? Would it be possible to scale zoom level to min size as @alexisvl mentioned. So the smaller you take the window, the more zoomed out it becomes? This would keep your stickers popup and other buttons in view no matter the minimum size, instead of arbitrarily limiting users to a minimum size that might not work for their monitor resolutions.

[wdbm]

Currently, the Signal Desktop window minimum width is set at 680 and the minimum height is set at 550. The relevant code can be seen here. This breaks my use case because I use Signal Desktop both on a 640 x 480 display and with specific window tiling. I see no usage issues in reducing these dimensions somewhat, particularly given that Signal Desktop features zooming in and out functionality.

In my testing it is reasonable to change from the following:

const MIN_WIDTH = 680;
const MIN_HEIGHT = 550;

to the following:

const MIN_WIDTH = 500;
const MIN_HEIGHT = 375;

I request comments on this as a proposed small and easy change. The default window dimensions can remain unchanged.

[Tejeev]

Is it necessary to dictate an arbitrary minimum at all? We can zoom the text smaller if we choose to have a smaller size window. Everyone has a different best fit screen resolution, window size, and text size, and it seems rather counter intuitive to enforce how small or large the window can be made..
We should be able to resize the window so it basically disappears except for the buttons in the window manager (like most applications). If you use I3, or a window manager with no title bar, or something more eccentric, you have the know how to manage your window yourself despite the odd user issues this normal ability to resize a window might create, so there is no need to "guard" the user against those "bugs".

[dudeofawesome]

Here's a somewhat naïve stylesheet I threw together that collapses the sidebar when the window is at its minimum size.

@media (max-width: 680px) {
  .gutter.inactive {
    width: 83px;
  }

  .module-left-pane__header {
    display: none;
  }

  .module-left-pane__virtual-list {
    width: 83px !important;
  }

  .module-conversation-list-item__content {
    display: none;
  }
}

Here's a script you can run in the console to add the style:

let s = document.createElement('style');
s.innerHTML = `
@media (max-width: 680px) {
  .gutter.inactive {
    width: 83px;
  }

  .module-left-pane__header {
    display: none;
  }

  .module-left-pane__virtual-list {
    width: 83px !important;
  }

  .module-conversation-list-item__content {
    display: none;
  }
}
`;
document.body.appendChild(s);

This does get rid of the search and account buttons, so certainly not ideal.

[twmccart]

Is there a way to put a bounty on this issue?

[Fmstrat]

Minimum height is also an issue on 1080p monitors in GNOME. If you put 4 messenger apps in 4 corners, Signal is taller than half the monitor.

[Fmstrat]

Ok, so I've been doing some testing for a PR on this. The problems with the above recommended settings are that they are too short for the sticker window, and too narrow for the default "Send a message" text (they cause scrollbars to appear).

Once I locate where the height settings are for the sticker panel I'll test things in OSX/Windows/GNOME and submit a PR.

[Fmstrat]

The above PR does not address a smaller left pane, but it does shrink the window down while adjusting sticker and emoji panels down just a bit so that multi-line text entry does not bump it off the canvas. Hopefully this goes through smoothly. Thanks!