Per account settings are a good thing, if not necessarily for everyone.
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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Sensible per account settings certainly are. But these almost exclusively aren't, because they aren't really account-related settings.
My eyesight certainly doesn't change when I switch Lemmy accounts/instances, so why the heck should the font size?
Even if there were a genuine use-case for having different font sizes, themes, media-handling per account/instance, do you genuinely think that the vast majority of all users want entirely different app settings per Lemmy account and have them revert to their defaults each time they log into a new account, or would the majority just want to set these things up once and have them apply to all accounts automatically?
Per account settings, they way they are done here, would be a terrible default. As it stands, though, that's not just the default, it appears to be the only option.
I understand your point for sure!
However, by making all of them account specific, but having import/export as an option that will let you set up each account exactly the same if you want, you can still have the ability to have multiple users on multiple accounts as well.
That may or may not be a feature that's useful to you, and I'm certain it isn't for everyone. But I can say that our "bathroom tablet" that we can all grab as needed that has the fonts for my account set bigger, my kid's smaller, etc, it's handy.
It actually is a feature many people liked on reddit. There were complaints as well, of course, but the import/export function really does make it trivial to fix up. It would be nice of there was also an option to set some settings as permanent, but I'm not sure how that would work.
Fwiw, my homie, spider, has another use case. He has his main account, and a porn account. The main account, he has link handling set up one way, with a dark them that's subdued. His porn account opens links externally only, and has a brighter theme so that he doesn't get crossed up when visitors are over. Now, the font stuff he sets the same of course.
But I can say that our "bathroom tablet" that we can all grab as needed that has the fonts for my account set bigger, my kid's smaller, etc, it's handy.
Ignoring the fact that the "communal poop tablet" is probably not all the terribly common, why on earth would you rely on In-App-User-Profiles for that instead of Android User Profiles?
but having import/export as an option that will let you set up each account exactly the same if you want,
That might have been fine with one or two Reddit alt-accounts, but Lemmy is an entirely different beast. I feel like I'm instance-hopping almost daily for one reason or another and I'm rapidly amassing new accounts. Given how aggressively some instances defederate (I'm looking at you, Beehaw), there's little choice if you want to experience most of what Lemmy has to offer.
Suddenly, keeping all settings on these accounts in sync becomes a rather tedious and arduous task, which requires repetition every time one chooses to change their settings.
Compared to that, the edge cases where it may actually be useful behavior are ridiculously small. So, having this as the default and only behavior is simply bad design.
Like I said, it may not meet your preferences
Like I said, this isn't about personal preference, this is about general preference.
You can't tell me that "people with different eyesight, and who inexplicably don't want to use Android user profiles, sharing a poop tablet" is a larger subset of users than those who just want (and reasonably expect) the damn font size to stay the same when they switch Lemmy accounts. Right now, the app exclusively caters to the first group and doesn't even give the second group an option.
You can't tell me
Neither can you tell the opposite without doing a serious research. Did you?
I'll start my extensive poop tablet research as soon as my grant has been funded.
Again, like I said, the way it is now allows you to load in your settings exactly the same for every account. You just don't like how it does it.
Be as pissed as you want, but that's how it is. If that's a dealbreaker for you, oh well. I wasn't aware this post was just a rant. If I had, I wouldn't have bothered you. You asked a question in your title, I attempted to answer that. I'm not here to argue.
Edit: and don't forget, sync is not a brand new app. The reddit version was one of the most popular, most used apps on Android for reddit. Go look at the original subreddit. The settings features as they are now were used by all of those people, happily. Don't conflate your personal opinion as automatically being what is generally desired by a very long history of huge amounts of users.
I agree, it should be global by default and changeable per account
That's definitely how it worked on reddit. He's using the original reddit app as the base. Cut him some slack right now, he's still working on the lemmy specific features. Stuff like this is perfectly functional, so tweaking it is most likely a pretty low priority.
i think you can export the settings from one profile and import them into the other
That's pretty cumbersome, isn't it, though?
Yes, and unnecessary.
It's less than 10 "clicks".
I'm pretty sure my app's font size and media handling didn't change every time when I switched accounts in Sync for Reddit.
It changed for me too on the reddit app, as it does on the lemmy app. Best thing to do I export settings and import into other accounts
I agree. This is one thing that is too much akin to how things work on Reddit.
On Lemmy having 10+ accounts is not really exceptional and backuping/restoring each time you change one settings is not sustainable
I like the OSMand approach: whenever you change something you get an extra prompt on the bottom of the screen whether you would like to make the change in all other profiles (driving, browsing, walking, public transport, cycling etc) or keep it only here or revert, as pictured below:
Well I guess at the same time there are some settings which are global regardless, but that's only stuff such as display language, data storage folder or map rendering engine. Otherwise everything can be customised in each profile separately