Make Developer Tools accessible through GUI

[Xiretza]

Your use case

What would you like to do?

Currently, the "Developer Tools" modal seems to only be accessible by sending the "/devtools" command to a room. It should also be accessible through a more discoverable graphical menu.

Why would you like to do it?

I don't know any concrete design policies for Element, but personally I find the current state quite surprising - with a primarily graphical application such as Element, I expect all functionality to be accessible through some menu or another and to not have to resort to a command line interface.

How would you like to achieve it?

The ideal place for it would probably be in the "Advanced" tab of the Room Settings dialog (entered either 1. by clicking the three dots on or right clicking a room/space -> Settings, 2. by clicking the room name on the top of the room window -> Settings, or 3. via "Room Info" sidebar -> Room settings). Currently, this tab only contains the room ID and room version.

Have you considered any alternatives?

No response

Additional context

No response

[robintown]

It is accessible through the GUI as described in #21771 (comment), though I agree that the setting to enable developer mode in the first place could stand to be accessible somewhere in the non-developer GUI

[Xiretza]

Agreed - while it is accessible through the GUI when developer mode is active, the only way to enable developer mode is through the exact menu in question. Making it possible to enable developer mode through the main Settings menu would also solve this catch-22, but the main Settings menu doesn't (currently) have an "Advanced" tab that this setting would obviously fit into.

[t3chguy]

Making it possible to enable developer mode through the main Settings menu would also solve this catch-22, but the main Settings menu doesn't (currently) have an "Advanced" tab that this setting would obviously fit into.

So this used to be possible but required show_labs_settings to be enabled in the config.json so it was actually restrictive to you needing a development build/config.

[MadLittleMods]

Adding it back to Room settings -> Advanced when developer mode is enabled would be nice 👍

It is accessible through the GUI as described in #21771 (comment), though I agree that the setting to enable developer mode in the first place could stand to be accessible somewhere in the non-developer GUI

I completely missed the quick settings menu at bottom of the space bar and thought it was only toggle-able via /devtools which sucks when you're trying to compose a message with some copy-pasted event ID's.

[robintown]

It isn't a room-level setting though, it's device level, so it would probably belong somewhere in user settings nevermind, misread what you were saying

[t3chguy]

@MadLittleMods

Adding it back to Room settings -> Advanced when developer mode is enabled would be nice 👍

It is also in the room menu

[fnwbr]

Thanks for all the hints you people gave.
At the same time I agree that it would be nice to make this even more accessible.

Adding the "Enable developer mode" toggle to the "All settings" > "Labs" > "Developer" section would be quite nice.

[MadLittleMods]

Adding it back to Room settings -> Advanced when developer mode is enabled would be nice 👍

To add another reason why opening from the room list -> Settings -> Advanced would be nice is if you want to check your notification debug status without opening up the room which would modify the read state.

[weeman1337]

I am currently working on matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk#10634 . I think some suggestions from here are good additions or may even replace the room selection:

• Option to enable developer mode in settings
• If dev mode is enabled a menu item in the room list

[daniellekirkwood]

Hey there!

We've made the decision to leave the Developer Tools toggle inside of the /devtools command. Once developer tools has been activated, you're now able to access the developer tools for a room using the room context menu and the room header menu.

We do not want to reveal the Developer Tools toggle at a higher level (in General Settings) at this stage.

Thanks for your feedback. I'll be closing this issue but if you have other ideas, comments, or user problems feel free to raise them.

[MadLittleMods]

The last comment makes it seem like nothing more is happening from what we currently have in the UI. But reading closely, this does actually include an improvment:

Once developer tools has been activated, you're now able to access the developer tools for a room using the room context menu

Which is being addressed by matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk#10635

This solves my use case of being able to open notification debug and reference other rooms without opening the room 👍