ipfs
IPFS status isn't reflected in the system tray menu if connected to a remote node
- OS: Windows 10
- Version of IPFS Desktop 0.15.0
Describe the bug I connect my IPFS Desktop installation on Windows to another IPFS node on my Raspberry Pi on my local network. The connection is established correctly, but certain system tray menu items like Status / Files / Peers are disabled. If I open the UI of IPFS Desktop all the pages are fine, showing the status / files / peers of my remote node.
To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:
- Install an IPFS node on your local network
- Start IPFS Desktop on another computer
- Change the API address to the remote one
- Right click on the system tray icon
- You will see that certain items are disabled
Expected behavior I would expect to see the Status / Files / Peers menu items enabled. Also it would be great if the IPFS node status on the top of the tray menu and the tray icon itself would show the status of the currently connected (remote) node.
Screenshots
We are connected to the remote node, but the tray menu doesn't reflect that:
Setup of the remote API address:
Changing API address applies only to WebUI. Everything else reflects local node that ships with IPFS Desktop. That is why you see remote API in webui, but desktop tray menu is still disabled.
The fix here is to either:
- (A) hide "API Address" inputs when webui is running inside of IPFS Desktop
- (B) make IPFS Desktop aware of "API address" changes made inside of webui
(A) is easy, (B) is tricky because it is unclear how to indicate "stop using remote API, restore running built-in node" Unless we find an intuitive way to solve (B), I suggest fixing the UX gap with (A).
My suggestion would probably be an overkill, because I'm not sure how many people would like to manage multiple nodes with one IPFS Desktop instance, but theoretically we could change the UI to handle multiple node addresses and switch among them.
I would imagine something like this on the Settings page:
What do you think?
I like it, this would make a nice feature for ipfs-webui for power users, but needs additional work if we want to show API ADDRESS section in ipfs-desktop, namely make a clear distinction between node managed by Desktop app and a remote one.
FYSA for now we went with (A) and the next release with ipfs-webui v2.13.0 (https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/pull/1903) will be hiding API selection in Desktop app for now, to reduce user confusion described in the beginning of this issue.
Won't have bandwidth for more than that for the time being, but if someone submits a PR with (B) and the UI you proposed, I'm happy to review and accept.