Wire-webapp: Aliases for contacts

Created on 15 Sep 2016 · 30Comments · Source: wireapp/wire-webapp

Because some people set stupid names or nicknames when registering so you have no idea who they are.

And it also makes sense in other means, like adding what company the contact belongs to
(Would be better handled with Groups though).

conversation-list low feature / request ✨

Source

tmikaeld

👍28

Most helpful comment

@tmikaeld We will work on improving the whole naming area soon. Hold on tight.

helenakos on 27 Sep 2016

👍13

All 30 comments

@tmikaeld We will work on improving the whole naming area soon. Hold on tight.

helenakos on 27 Sep 2016

👍13

@helenakos That's great! Looking forward to it.

tmikaeld on 27 Sep 2016

Sorry for closing, mistook it for the new naming but it's different.

tmikaeld on 31 Jan 2017

I renamed it to aliases to avoid confusion.

lipis on 31 Jan 2017

👍2

Will the aliases be saved locally or will they be uploaded to the server to synchronize among the devices? I believe they should be somehow protected. It would be great if the list is encrypted with the device keys so the server can store it but can't read it.

anatoli26 on 18 Feb 2017

👍2

@anatoli26 security and privacy are on top of our lists.. so we will not compromise those for anything :)

lipis on 22 Feb 2017

👍3

glad to hear that!

anatoli26 on 22 Feb 2017

I really like Wire and I like to recommend it to my friends but if they realize that they can't rename the contacts they will not use wire. This is a show stopper for further spreading of this great app. It would be great if this feature could be realized soon.

theincogtion on 7 Apr 2017

👍5

@helenakos Something new when "soon" could be?

ghost on 22 Apr 2017

@sebastianbauer Hi, we don't have a committed date for these yet.

helenakos on 24 Apr 2017

Another vote for this option.
I am trying to get my skype contacts to switch to wire, but some of them would be nice to rename the display name as I prefix my contacts to show where i know them from.

zylden on 19 Jul 2017

Judging from the issue queue, this is probably one of the most wanted features:

I know there are probably other more critical/urgent issues now, just saw this again in wireapp/wire-desktop#854 and decided to make a list so this issue would get linked with others and become easier to find and hopefully people would create less duplicates.

shvchk on 10 Aug 2017

👍8

@gregor thank you very much for paying attention to my request at https://github.com/wireapp/wire-desktop/issues/902 . However, I can see this problem has been reported more than a year ago and many people want it so may I please ask why it hasn't been implemented yet? Are there any particular difficulties? I dare speak for the rest of us by saying that even if this feature is only available locally (so that renaming must be done per device) this is way better than not having it at all.

ddobrev on 28 Aug 2017

We monitor feature requests brought to our attention via GitHub and other channels and consider them in our product planning. We have a limited set of resources and always have to prioritize our work based a number of different factors. So far the renaming of contacts - local or synced across devices - has not been high enough on our list of things to do to get addressed. We continue to reevaluate our priorities but I cannot promise if or when a feature will get implemented. I totally agree with you that it is a nice one to have though. If we implement it in a synching fashion, we also need to schedule the cross platform effort involved between all client teams. Currently we are focussed on shaping our teams feature on all platforms.

gregor on 28 Aug 2017

They don't want to give possibility to set actual real name as alias (friends know real name and surname, and for sure, they will use it as aliases).
Because they think about privacy.
But here is solution: additional option (bool) in user settings, where account owner will be able to restrict aliases for himself. That option may be disabled by default.

GitStorageOne on 28 Aug 2017

@GitStorageOne if they only change it locally, then security is not an issue.

ddobrev on 28 Aug 2017

And if it's synchronized for all user devices, it should be encrypted with the account keys so nobody could read the aliases.

anatoli26 on 29 Aug 2017

Due to the nature of this being a feature request, I am closing this issue.

We hear the desire for it. There are not immediate plans to implement something along those lines though. We will continue to track and reevaluate this internally.

gregor on 29 Aug 2017

😕8

@gregor: I am confused that this issue is marked closed, as it is in fact open :)

A couple of reasons why this issue should be marked open:

Because it is relevant and unsolved.
The open state allows users to find the canonical version and understand the current state of the issue easily, whereas duplicates shall be closed.
Even if it's not on your immediate roadmap, other developers could work on it with a pull request, and other contributors can conceptually work on the issue _here_ on the issue itself. Hey, we're Free Software!

Furthermore, I consider this issue as a critical issue (and not only a feature request, but also a bug), because it may lead to accidental disclosure of sensitive data (which any message can contain) to unauthorized parties (i.e. other contacts, e.g. random contacts with the same first name as the actual recipient).

Thanks for listening and fixing and thanks a huge lot for Wire and for making it Free Software!!

nidico on 10 Oct 2017

❤8

Addendum: I would expect the canonical version of this issue in wireapp/wire, not _here_ in wireapp/wire-desktop, therefore I added a new issue _there_ - now in the form of a bug instead of a feature request (because the privacy bug is the underlying critical issue).

Here's the new bug report, also summarizing the proposed solution: wireapp/wire#104.

nidico on 10 Oct 2017

I can't believe this feature hasn't been implemented yet. It would not be very difficult to add and it would make the application so much better. Far too many contacts add stupid names or non-descriptive names and you have no idea who they are without any means of correcting it. Having the ability to rename or alias local contacts is an absolute necessity. The developers not taking this feature request seriously means they do not want WIRE to propagate and become a useful tool.

githubmavin on 29 Sep 2018

❤5 👍4 😄2

See it the same way as my prespeakers! This shouldn't be closed at all - it's a feature-(future)-request and isn't done. It is one of the most discussed topics (top10 on issues; even higher on feature-requests).
It would be a huge 'selling' point if you could rename the contacts locally. Especially as the names are very anonymous/cryptic and you want to be in control to whom you are speaking to.

odwcalvin on 29 Dec 2018

Hi there, I need this as well. Just please, everything else is awesome.

BenoitFroment on 15 Jul 2019

Could you please deliver this feature? It was requested in September 2016.

What is the current state about this feature? Is it going to be implemented yet or no?

ping @ffflorian @lipis @bennyn

europ on 16 Aug 2019

👍1

@europ there are no updates as of now. Anyway, I re-opened this for better visibility.

ffflorian on 16 Aug 2019

👍2

@tmikaeld We will work on improving the whole naming area soon. Hold on tight.

holding on tight ist starting to hurt after 3 years.

larcenou on 17 Sep 2019

😄1

Actually that would be a terrible feature to have.
Not everyone wants their name used over the Internet and the lack of contact renaming is so far one the best features of Wire.
If you add something like that at the very least each person should have the option to allow whether others can rename them or not...