Signal-desktop: RFE: Allow sidebar with contacts to be adjusted in width to compact it with only picture circles remaining

[michael-nischt]

Signal is great but the Desktop Client uses a lot of screen space. Others like Google Hangouts allow the width of the sidebar with all contact names and pictures to be resized. The circles containing the contact's image or initials will always remain but the names would clip until they fully disappear when the with is set to the minimal.

Alternative, a "compact mode" setting would already be great if resizing is too much effort.

[adioe3]

I tend to zoom in the Signal desktop client on my 13 inch 4k laptop screen and it's really annoying when the contact list is using 40% of the screen. Some sort of collapsing would be great.

[deutrino]

See also #1871, #2454, #2510...

[j-mikhail]

Until the Signal team gets around to implementing this, here's a quick workaround:

1. Select _View_ from the menu, then _Toggle Developer Tools_.
2. In the _Elements_ tab, expand the body tag, then the div tag of class inbox index.
3. Click on the div tag of class gutter inactive.
4. In the _Styles_ tab, which is usually underneath, find the gutter class.
5. Change the width parameter to 75px (the size may vary on your screen)
6. Enjoy!

The only downside is you'll have to repeat these steps every time you relaunch Signal.

[sindastra]

I think this example here is exactly how it should be: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/2510#issuecomment-453546794

[vcavallo]

Since we're pasting this workaround between threads... here's mine from the other:

Until the Signal team gets around to implementing this, here's a quick workaround:

1. Select View from the menu, then Toggle Developer Tools.
   ...

Alternatively, as a single step, open those same Developer tools, then click the Console tab, and enter this within:

document.getElementsByClassName('gutter inactive')[0].style.width = '75px';

(or whatever size you want other than 75.)

[krstp]

One more things to note, the 75px workaround is great, but it still constrains the main window to like 300-something-px width, something to keep in mind when deploying full feature.

[ConstantineK]

I tend to zoom in the Signal desktop client on my 13 inch 4k laptop screen and it's really annoying when the contact list is using 40% of the screen. Some sort of collapsing would be great.

When I actually resize signal to fit on my screen the box allows ~44% of the window to be taken up by pointless gray nothing. On my screen that's 243,000 or so pixels just hanging out.

[krstp]

Well if you constrain it via px specification this will not happen.

[ConstantineK]

@krstp :) I mean via normal resizing - most users are not popping dev tools.

[michael-nischt]

I'm sorry but I'll close this issue. Doesn't seem to get addressed anyway as it's almost 1.5y old. :upside_down_face: