Created attachment 143187 [details] Screenshot SUMMARY Currently when Discover notifies about new updates it only notifies about the fact there are updates. It shares zero information about them in the notification popup. These notifications could be made more informative by showing the number of pending updates and displaying a really short summary on what's getting updated. Showing the number of pending updates would also be beneficial for nudging users to update. I feel bad praising Google on user interface design given how they massacred their UI in the recent years, but their Play Store notifications are a good example on how this could be done in KDE. OBSERVED RESULT -Discover-------- Updates available [View Updates] ----------------- EXPECTED RESULT -Discover-------- Updates available Krita, Kdenlive, and 123 other packages are ready for update [View Updates] ----------------- SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Operating System: KDE neon 5.23 KDE Plasma Version: 5.23.2 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.87.0 Qt Version: 5.15.3 Graphics Platform: X11
How would a more populated notification improve your experience? It doesn't even tell you all the things that changed.
But it tells me that some things have changed and pending updates have started amassing in the background. After the introduction of offline updates I started being guilty of not immediately updating when I only have a small number of outdated packages, postponing things a bit because restarting my machine every day just for updating three random packages is a hassle [1]. I may not be the only user that offline updates had this kind of detrimental effect on. And I cannot turn off offline updates because live updates have caused me severe Plasma and Dolphin breakages in the past. Showing a bit more detail in the notification popups would help nudging me to not forget updating. Currently these notification popups and the tray icon are devoid of any kind information, triggering banner blindness in users like me. [1] Why?: Partially broken login screen on multi-monitor setup with different resolutions, broken session restore in several of my apps (Bug 439243 and friends), etc.
Somewhat related GitLab issue: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/-/issues/15
(In reply to Aleix Pol from comment #1) > How would a more populated notification improve your experience? It doesn't > even tell you all the things that changed. It could tell me whether the detected updates are "System Updates", or flatpak updates, or firmware etc. I don't use Discover for system updates because it's horribly slow, I just use dnf on the command-line. But I do use it for flatpak and fwupd updates, because I'm lazy and they're less frequent so I don't mind the slowness. So it would be nice if the "updates available" notification let me know if it's something I can ignore.
I like the openSUSE Tumbleweed implementation with Plasma: the tooltip for the notifier icon shows the number of updates, and when you click the icon it lists them
(In reply to Nagy Tibor from comment #3) > Somewhat related GitLab issue: > https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/-/issues/15 If somebody *isn't* going to click on the 'updates available' notification in the first place, adding more info isn't going to help. If they *are* going to click it, then adding more information is wasted effort... Because they're going to click it anyway. There is a red icon used when security updates are available, as opposed to a blue icon for normal updates. If somebody is going to ignore that too, then what will more information in the system tray ultimately achieve?
(In reply to john.liptrot from comment #6) > (In reply to Nagy Tibor from comment #3) > > Somewhat related GitLab issue: > > https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/-/issues/15 > > If somebody *isn't* going to click on the 'updates available' notification > in the first place, adding more info isn't going to help. > > If they *are* going to click it, then adding more information is wasted > effort... Because they're going to click it anyway. But what about if they just hover the mouse over it? Currently it just says "Updates available", and I have to click on it to see what they are. But that's not useful, I know updates are available, or the icon wouldn't be in the systray. If the mouseover popup said "4 flatpak updates and 28 system updates" or something along those lines, it would be more information. So I don't think what you say above is true. There's a third case, where they might click on it depending on what kind of updates are available. > > There is a red icon used when security updates are available, as opposed to > a blue icon for normal updates. If somebody is going to ignore that too, > then what will more information in the system tray ultimately achieve?
> But what about if they just hover the mouse over it? Currently it just says > "Updates available", and I have to click on it to see what they are. But > that's not useful, I know updates are available, or the icon wouldn't be in > the systray. If you know updates are there then install them? Plus, you have to click on the icon to install the updates anyway, so what difference does it make if the notification icon is jam-packed with information or simply says "updates available"? It doesn't change the fact that you *need* to click the icon. > If the mouseover popup said "4 flatpak updates and 28 system updates" or > something along those lines, it would be more information. So I don't think > what you say above is true. There's a third case, where they might click on > it depending on what kind of updates are available. It would indeed be more information, but so what? You *still* need to click the icon anyway. When you do click the icon, you are taken to the updates page containing all the information you want/need.
No, you don't necessarily need to "click it anyway". See comment 4. If it told me all the updates available are RPM updates not flatpak updates, then I'd run dnf in a terminal instead of clicking and waiting for Discover to refresh its cache, and then ignoring Discover trying to convince me I should reboot after I've updated something that doesn't need a reboot. The notification tells me there are updates, but I don't have to use Discover to install them. If the notification told me more information, it would be more useful. This shouldn't be hard to understand.
(In reply to Jonathan Wakely from comment #9) > No, you don't necessarily need to "click it anyway". See comment 4. If it > told me all the updates available are RPM updates not flatpak updates, then > I'd run dnf in a terminal instead of clicking and waiting for Discover to > refresh its cache, and then ignoring Discover trying to convince me I should > reboot after I've updated something that doesn't need a reboot. > > The notification tells me there are updates, but I don't have to use > Discover to install them. If the notification told me more information, it > would be more useful. This shouldn't be hard to understand. In comment #4, you wrote; >So it would be nice if the "updates available" notification let me know if it's something I can ignore. I would say that it does, actually. Blue icon is for flatpak, snap, system updates etc, which IMO can be ignored. Red icon is security updates, which IMO cannot (or should not) be ignored. What somebody can/should ignore is ultimately subjective, there is no objective measure of which updates should/should not be installed. KDE has purposefully split the icon between red & blue for this reason, but this is still only a subjective point of view.
This is about the notification, not the system tray icon.