Aliases for contacts about wire-webapp

[helenakos]

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

[githubmavin]

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.

[shvchk]

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

• wireapp/wire-desktop#25
• wireapp/wire-desktop#292
• wireapp/wire-desktop#554
• wireapp/wire-desktop#854
• wireapp/wire#8
• wireapp/wire#64
• wireapp/wire-android#214
• wireapp/wire-android#248
• wireapp/wire-android#310
• wireapp/wire-android#336
• wireapp/wire-android#451
• wireapp/wire-android#797
• wireapp/wire-ios#208
• wireapp/echo-bot#26

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.

[gregor]

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.

[nidico]

@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!!

[theincogtion]

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.

[bennycode]

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

bump..... 4 years, no progress? :(

We don't plan to build this feature anytime soon.

[lipis]

I renamed it to aliases to avoid confusion.

[anatoli26]

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.

[lipis]

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

[ffflorian]

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

[europ]

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

[larcenou]

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

holding on tight ist starting to hurt after 3 years.

[tmikaeld]

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

[tmikaeld]

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

[anatoli26]

glad to hear that!

@helenakos Something new when "soon" could be?

[helenakos]

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

[zylden]

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.

[ddobrev]

@gregor thank you very much for paying attention to my request at wireapp/wire-desktop#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.

[gregor]

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.

[GitStorageOne]

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.

[ddobrev]

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

[anatoli26]

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

[nidico]

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.

[odwcalvin]

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.

[BenoitFroment]

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

[Sledge-Hammer]

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...

[pinta83]

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

bump..... 4 years, no progress? :(

[nidico]

FYI, here's the spec proposal solving the same issue in Matrix: matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals#3015