Signal-desktop: Feature Request: Do not load all message contents on app start

[coolwolf]

Hi,
Loading all messages at start causes high data usage and long startup time.
I think it is not necessary.
Messages may be loaded when user clicks on user which as conversation history.

Thanks

[harshilparmar]

(suggestion) What about loading only those message which can be fit into user screen size on first render.

[simonmueck]

I think thats a great idea!

[harshilparmar]

(suggestion) What about loading only those message which can be fit into user screen size on first render.

Can I try this?

[moontails]

Came here to request this. Very annoying to have the desktop app pause on load screen to retrieve 1000000 messages before showing the chat windows.

Some nice ideas above, another option would be to say load the top X message and load the app and then fetch messages on user click or even proactively get all in the background or something.. Definitely room for improvement

[Suzie97]

How about the latest messages on start up and then maybe run a daemon in the background to load messages which are not currently viewed by the user?

[Suzie97]

This is also a nice idea, https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/3010#issuecomment-455539569

[moontails]

@Suzie97 i am not sure that (#3010 comment idea) great though as it can potentially lead to bad experience if the user chooses a high number. We would want to have a consistent behavior no matter how many messages you have.

So I think loading a subset at startup (different strategies to think about here) and having others load based on user action (like clicking on a chat head or using daemons to prefetch in some fashion etc) will lead to an overall better user experience.

[Suzie97]

@Suzie97 i am not sure that (#3010 comment idea) great though as it can potentially lead to bad experience if the user chooses a high number. We would want to have a consistent behavior no matter how many messages you have.

So I think loading a subset at startup (different strategies to think about here) and having others load based on user action (like clicking on a chat head or using daemons to prefetch in some fashion etc) will lead to an overall better user experience.

Yeah, I get your point. Its a nice idea.

[dreaddr]

I come here to ask this to be a background process, as well as to make Signal (the whole app) to be able to run in the background as well like many other popular messaging apps.

Serious issue cause if I accidentally close out of Signal and want to load back in, it takes precious unrecoverable time to load some messages I won't even be reading.