Progress Monitoring

[gabrielrsep]

I think the app needs a way to monitor the progress of the files being pinned and the garbage collector.

[SgtPooki]

@SrStick we have a new feature that will be coming out in the next release, brought over by #1919. We will be pushing out another release this week that will include this change. Does that solve the request you're making here?

Also, there is a chance we could implement a new page where users can view pending actions: file import, pinning files, bitswap wantlist, etc.. (somewhat related to the status update popup at #2030)

We will move this to webui to expand on this

[SgtPooki]

@juliaxbow we still need to work on defining requirements and functionality, but this could use your eyes and input :)

[MicahZoltu]

This is a pretty huge hurdle for new users. I have people who I encourage to use IPFS Desktop, and then when I send them a file hash and they add it to their IPFS desktop the expectation is that it will download in the background. However, there is no UI that indicates whether download is occurring or not, and if you pin it there is also no indication of any sort of progress. For very tiny files that are readily available at major gateways this isn't a big problem, but when I add a file to my local gateway and then share the hash, this file may take hours before it is available to them (especially if it is large).

The net result is everyone who I convince to use IPFS Desktop ends up incredibly confused and can't figure out how to actually access the file I want to share with them. A big part of this is the total lack of feedback on what is actually happening behind the scenes when you add a file to IPFS Desktop by hash.

I looked through the issues in this repository and there are a bunch of places where people talk of adding progress bars and the issues are closed as fixed, but I don't see any progress bars nor anything even indicating that a file is being fetched at all. From the sound of it, adding a file to IPFS Desktop doesn't actually do anything unless you pin it? And if you pin it there is no indication of whether the download of that file to the local client is complete or not.