Don't show call sidebar when nobody has their camera turned on #30342
Description
Your use case
What would you like to do?
When I am in a 1-on-1 call on Element and somebody starts screensharing, a sidebar is currently always shown on the right side of the screen.
I would prefer, instead, no sidebar to be shown when I'm calling someone and they start screensharing.
Why would you like to do it?
The sidebar is taking up valuable screen space, which could be better utilized by the shared screen instead.
How would you like to achieve it?
I suppose that there is a valid usecase for having the call sidebar, when people has their camera on—as it lets you see the other person's face, or to monitor your own face.
However, when no one has their camera on, the call sidebar only serves to show the participants' avatars and whether they are currently muted—and it's taking up way too much space to do that.
As such, I would suggest making the sidebar default to hidden unless someone has their camera on.
If it's still valuable to show whether the remote party's microphone is currently muted, this could probably be shown as an icon placed over the shared screen itself—the rest of the information presented by the sidebar is already duplicated elsewhere.
Have you considered any alternatives?
#25367 suggests remembering the sidebar state (open/closed) per call. While that is much better than having to click the show/hide button every time you navigate the interface, with it implemented you still have to click that button once per call that uses screen-sharing. This issue seeks to streamline even that.
Defaulting to hiding the sidebar every time, regardless of whose camera is on, might be unintuitive in case there are cameras on, since it wouldn't be apparent where the video went.
Additional context
(I'm reporting this issue on behalf of a friend—I don't personally use the screenshare function as often, but I can relay questions back to them)