element-hq / element-hq/element-meta

Option to hide display name

Open
#2,252 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
T-Enhancement
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Stars
112
Forks
25
Avg merge
6h 6m
Merged PRs (30d)
4

Description

### Your use case

#### What would you like to do?
I'd like to be able to hide display names, viewing only the full user URI, in both nick lists, `@`-references (including completion), and all events.

#### Why would you like to do it?
There are a few reasons, which I will iterate below.

- In many public channels, there are often users who set their display name to acryllic characters, emojis, long strings, or other character sets I'll henceforth refer to as "obtrusive".
- I think it is important to be able to know who is sending an event, and being mutable, the display name does not offer this.

#### How would you like to achieve it?

- A new setting phrased as `"{Always,Only} show {full,real} usernames"`, or `"Hide all display names"` that defaults to "off" in order to maintain the existing experience for all Element users
- If the setting is disabled (set to "off"), there should be no change from the current behavior of always showing display names.
- If the setting is enabled (set to "on"), always show the full username in any component that currently shows display names.

### Have you considered any alternatives?

_No response_

### Additional context

_No response_

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by locating the settings UI and the components that render display names in the Element clients, then trace nick lists, @-references and events. Done means an opt-in setting consistently shows full user URIs in all listed contexts while leaving the default behavior unchanged.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
frontend
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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