Show the status of add-ons in the system config when copying user config to system config by SaschaCowley · Pull Request #19808 · nvaccess/nvda

SaschaCowley · 2026-03-18T07:18:23Z

Link to issue number:

Closes #19550

Summary of the issue:

Since #19446, users can select which add-ons should be copied to the system-wide configuration when replacing it with their current user configuration. However, they cannot see whether an add-on is already present in the system configuration, and if so which version is present.

Description of user facing changes:

A new "System-wide version" column has been added to the copy add-ons dialog, which shows the version of the add-on present in the system config, if any.
The "Version" column in the same dialog has been renamed to "User version" to disambiguate it from the new "System-wide version" column.
The "Author" column in this dialog has been removed to cut down on verbosity. Author information is still available via the "About add-on..." button.
The list of add-ons now contains entries for add-ons which are only present in the system-wide configuration. In the case of these add-ons, the list item does not have an associated checkbox, and the name is prefixed with "[remove]".
The text in the dialogs has been updated to reflect that add-ons only present in the system configuration will be removed when replacing it with the user config.
Add-ons in the user configuration are checked by default if they also exist in the system-wide configuration.

Description of developer facing changes:

None in public API

Description of development approach:

Added a function to get add-on manifests from a directory without side-effects. This is similar to existing functionality, and this code should probably be refactored to reduce duplication. However, given how close we are to a release, this approach is safer.
Updated _CopyAddonsDialog to take two dictionaries - one mapping add-on names to Addon objects from the user config; and one mapping add-on names to AddonManifest objects from the system config (gathered with the new new _getAddonManifestsFromPath function).
Updated the prereqs for showing the copy add-ons dialog. It now requires that the user and system add-ons between them contain at least one add-on.
Created a tuple of (user AddonManifest, system AddonManifest) pairs, and used that to populate the add-ons list. This allows us to show details of the user and system add-ons.
Created a subclass of wx.ListCtrl which allows removing the checkbox from specific list items.
- This works by sending a window message to the underlying win32 ListView which sets the item's state image to 0 (0 is no checkbox, 1 is unchecked and 2 is checked).
- It also replaces the window proc for the containing dialog so that it can intercept and reject item state changing messages from the list control where those notifications represent attempting to check or uncheck an item which has had its checkbox removed. In all other cases, the original window proc is called.
- Finally, it overrides the IsItemChecked implementation, since the win32 macro that wx uses internally returns evaluates to true if the state image is set to 0.
Used this new control to show the list of add-ons. In the case of add-ons that are only present in the system config, the checkbox is removed. Since the list of all add-ons is constructed in such a way that these add-ons are strictly after add-ons that are present in the user config, the logic regarding getting copyable add-on IDs elsewhere in the dialog doesn't need to change.
Throughout the dialog, where there is no clear way to decide whether to use the user or system copy of an add-on, the user version is preferred, and the system copy is used as a fallback.

Testing strategy:

Tested interacting with the dialog with various combinations of add-ons in the user and system configurations, and that in all cases the expected list of add-on IDs was returned. Testing was done by calling from gui.addonStoreGui.controls.messageDialogs import _getAddonsToCopy;_getAddonsToCopy(None) in the python console when running from source. _getAddonsToCopy was slightly modified to force it to use %ProgramFiles%\nvda\systemConfig\addons.

Known issues with pull request:

None known

Code Review Checklist:

Documentation:
- Change log entry
- User Documentation
- Developer / Technical Documentation
- Context sensitive help for GUI changes
Testing:
- Unit tests
- System (end to end) tests
- Manual testing
UX of all users considered:
- Speech
- Braille
- Low Vision
- Different web browsers
- Localization in other languages / culture than English
API is compatible with existing add-ons.
Security precautions taken.

…effects

wmhn1872265132 · 2026-03-18T08:04:41Z

Can you consider removing the author column from the dialog? Some Add ons have very long authors, which requires listening to a lot of useless information to obtain the checkbox status
Not chosen

CyrilleB79 · 2026-03-18T10:33:44Z

I have given a try to this for early feedback.

Checkbox list

Mixing items with and without checkbox in the same list is not the best UX, more because:

The presence of the checkbox is reported after the whole item is being read but users manly want to hear the add-on's name and its state (copy / do not copy).
having uncheckable items in the list will probably not be very frequent, actually only when you have already copied an add-on in system config and then you have removed it from user config; this makes more less opportunities for the user to get used to this strange UX.

Instead of the checkable items, could we add an action column containing "Copy" / "Do not copy" value for add-ons not already in the system-wide config and "Delete" / "Update" for add-ons already in the system-wide config. This could be the second column. And pressing space could allow to toggle the value in the column. At last, for add-ons only in system config but not in user one, you'd only have "Delete" value with no possibility to toggle it.

About add-on button

Regarding the "About add-on..." button: Does it open the information of the user version or the system-wide version?

Dialog introduction text

I was already of the opinion that the intro message of the "Copy add-ons" dialog was poorly worded and had to be reworded. This is more true with this new experience / feature.
I may provide a suggestion once the UX of the dialog is validated.

Extra note

By the way, you should not use:
systemAddonsDir = os.path.join("c:", "Program Files", "nvda", "systemConfig", "addons")
but (note the backslash after "c:":
systemAddonsDir = os.path.join("c:\\", "Program Files", "nvda", "systemConfig", "addons")
Strange, isn't it? Thanks to old MS-DOS syntax subtilities...

Mixing items with and without checkbox in the same list is not the best UX, more because:

The presence of the checkbox is reported after the whole item is being read but users manly want to hear the add-on's name and its state (copy / do not copy).
having uncheckable items in the list will probably not be very frequent, actually only when you have already copied an add-on in system config and then you have removed it from user config; this makes more less opportunities for the user to get used to this strange UX.

Instead of the checkable items, could we add an action column containing "Copy" / "Do not copy" value for add-ons not already in the system-wide config and "Delete" / "Update" for add-ons already in the system-wide config. This could be the second column. And pressing space could allow to toggle the value in the column. At last, for add-ons only in system config but not in user one, you'd only have "Delete" value with no possibility to toggle it.

Regarding the "About add-on..." button: Does it open the information of the user version or the system-wide version?

…ent in the system config

SaschaCowley · 2026-03-19T04:28:00Z

@wmhn1872265132

Can you consider removing the author column from the dialog?

Done. I was already thinking of doing this, so I'm glad I wasn't the only one. The author information is still available through the "About add-on..." button.

SaschaCowley · 2026-03-19T04:35:32Z

@CyrilleB79

Mixing items with and without checkbox in the same list is not the best UX, more because:

The presence of the checkbox is reported after the whole item is being read but users manly want to hear the add-on's name and its state (copy / do not copy).

This goes for all checkboxes in NVDA.

having uncheckable items in the list will probably not be very frequent, actually only when you have already copied an add-on in system config and then you have removed it from user config; this makes more less opportunities for the user to get used to this strange UX.

Note that I have removed the author column, so there is less verbosity before you hear (or rather don't hear) that there is no checkbox. I've also added a prefix to add-ons without checkboxes.

Instead of the checkable items, could we add an action column containing "Copy" / "Do not copy" value for add-ons not already in the system-wide config and "Delete" / "Update" for add-ons already in the system-wide config. This could be the second column. And pressing space could allow to toggle the value in the column. At last, for add-ons only in system config but not in user one, you'd only have "Delete" value with no possibility to toggle it.

Possibly in a future enhancement of this dialog. For now, what we have uses features already in wx or the underlying win32 controls. Your proposal would be more difficult (though by no means impossible) to implement.

Regarding the "About add-on..." button: Does it open the information of the user version or the system-wide version?

User version, falling back to system version. In a future enhancement perhaps we could use a tabbed dialog to present both.

By the way, you should not use: systemAddonsDir = os.path.join("c:", "Program Files", "nvda", "systemConfig", "addons") but (note the backslash after "c:": systemAddonsDir = os.path.join("c:\\", "Program Files", "nvda", "systemConfig", "addons") Strange, isn't it? Thanks to old MS-DOS syntax subtilities...

TIL! It happened to work here, but looking at the output it was indeed wrong. Thanks for the tip :)

wmhn1872265132 · 2026-03-19T04:42:21Z

Perhaps disabling the checkbox is better than removing it? At least this ensures consistency in behavior, that is, all items have checkboxes.

SaschaCowley · 2026-03-19T05:41:44Z

@wmhn1872265132

Perhaps disabling the checkbox is better than removing it? At least this ensures consistency in behavior, that is, all items have checkboxes.

That is what I would prefer too, but to the best of my knowledge it isn't possible with a win32 list-view control.

CyrilleB79 · 2026-03-19T07:15:04Z

Note that I have removed the author column, so there is less verbosity before you hear (or rather don't hear) that there is no checkbox.

Yes, I agree with removing this column too; I was about to suggest it myself too.

I've also added a prefix to add-ons without checkboxes.

Nice addition. This strongly mitigates the difficulty that user could encounter when discovering this list with unusual mixing of checkbox items with no-checkbox items.

Instead of the checkable items, could we add an action column containing "Copy" / "Do not copy" value for add-ons not already in the system-wide config and "Delete" / "Update" for add-ons already in the system-wide config. This could be the second column. And pressing space could allow to toggle the value in the column. At last, for add-ons only in system config but not in user one, you'd only have "Delete" value with no possibility to toggle it.

Possibly in a future enhancement of this dialog. For now, what we have uses features already in wx or the underlying win32 controls. Your proposal would be more difficult (though by no means impossible) to implement.

I do not understand why it would be more difficult from a GUI point of view; it's just about removing the use of checkbox items and add a column containing the corresponding information in text.
Anyway, given your previous modifications (prepending with [remove]" and removing the Author column), this is already addressed.

In the case of add-ons not present in user config, I've just thought another design.
Since the initial description is becoming a bit long in this case, we may split it and the add-ons list in two:

1st list: Add-ons of the user config, that you can copy or not in system config, with checkable items
2nd list: Add-ons of system config which are not in user config and which will be removed in any case. Would just be an information list with standard non-checkable items.

It's just an improvement idea, but the current design that you have is already acceptable. You may want to ship this PR as is so that all beta PRs be quickly fixed.

Copilot

Pull request overview

This PR enhances the “Copy settings to system-wide configuration” flow by showing which add-ons already exist in the system-wide config (and their versions), and by surfacing add-ons that will be removed when replacing the system config with the user config.

Changes:

Updates the copy add-ons dialog UI/UX: adds “System-wide version”, renames “Version” to “User version”, removes “Author”, and lists system-only add-ons as “[remove]” without checkboxes.
Adds lower-level Win32 list-view plumbing (new CommCtrl bindings + a list control that can suppress per-item checkboxes) to support the UI behavior.
Introduces a side-effect-free helper to enumerate add-on manifests from a directory for system-config inspection.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 8 out of 8 changed files in this pull request and generated 10 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
user_docs/en/userGuide.md	Updates user guide text to describe new dialog behavior and columns.
user_docs/en/changes.md	Updates changelog entry regarding deprecated WinUser structures.
source/winUser.py	Deprecates `NMHdrStruct` in favor of `winBindings.user32.NMHDR`.
source/winBindings/user32.py	Adds Win32 APIs/types needed for wndproc subclassing + defines `NMHDR`.
source/winBindings/CommCtrl.py	Adds CommCtrl list-view constants/structs for checkbox state manipulation.
source/gui/nvdaControls.py	Adds `_CheckListCtrl` that can remove item checkboxes by intercepting notifications.
source/gui/addonStoreGui/controls/messageDialogs.py	Updates `_CopyAddonsDialog` to show user/system versions and system-only removal rows.
source/addonHandler/init.py	Adds `_getAddonManifestsFromPath` and `_loadManifest` for manifest-only directory scans.

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CyrilleB79 · 2026-03-19T08:50:42Z

Another small issue:
If the add-on is in the user config, you display the visible name, as expected, e.g. "Character Information".
If the add-on is only in the system config, but not in the user config, the add-on ID (e.g. "charInfo") is displayed instead of the visible name.

…g or its addons dir doesn't exist

…better memory management

SaschaCowley · 2026-03-20T02:48:29Z

@CyrilleB79

If the add-on is in the user config, you display the visible name, as expected, e.g. "Character Information". If the add-on is only in the system config, but not in the user config, the add-on ID (e.g. "charInfo") is displayed instead of the visible name.

Fixed. Good catch, thank you.

Qchristensen

Docs look good

SaschaCowley added 10 commits March 10, 2026 17:27

Add a function to get add-on manifests from a directory without side-…

359152e

…effects

Minor improvements to new methods

8b35613

Show version of add-on in system wide config

fd25509

Fix definition of NMHDR and move to winBindings.user32

74b65dd

Add definitions

51a1c86

Rough and ready implementation

1bd3077

Fix about button

eff7a03

Warn when removing add-ons from system config

d7b9793

Show dialog when user config has no add-ons but system config does

90d7bb5

Wrapping

bb03931

SaschaCowley added this to the 2026.1 milestone Mar 18, 2026

SaschaCowley added the api-breaking-change label Mar 18, 2026

SaschaCowley self-assigned this Mar 18, 2026

SaschaCowley added 6 commits March 19, 2026 12:04

Don't show author, and prepend [delete] to add-ons that are only pres…

423ad1f

…ent in the system config

Minor code improvements

bb72ad9

Docstrings

c48bbf0

Code clean-up

251d3a6

Check addons that are already in the system profile

79b44b4

User guide

d6c7109

SaschaCowley marked this pull request as ready for review March 19, 2026 04:25

SaschaCowley requested review from a team as code owners March 19, 2026 04:25

SaschaCowley requested review from Qchristensen and seanbudd March 19, 2026 04:25

seanbudd requested a review from Copilot March 19, 2026 07:55

Copilot AI reviewed Mar 19, 2026

View reviewed changes

SaschaCowley added 2 commits March 20, 2026 10:19

Fix deprecation

0c8e1a2

Fix struct field

bfda273

SaschaCowley marked this pull request as draft March 19, 2026 23:25

SaschaCowley added 7 commits March 20, 2026 12:42

wndProc types

d376db2

Wrap getting system manifests in a try block in case the system confi…

f98fad2

…g or its addons dir doesn't exist

Extract checking if the directory is empty into its own function for …

0f2fa65

…better memory management

--amend

410d6e3

Docs

204a908

Rename winBindings.CommCtrl to winBindings.CommCtrl

e3d2160

Fix showing ID (name) instead of name (summary) for system only add-ons

c7d04bf

SaschaCowley marked this pull request as ready for review March 20, 2026 02:49

seanbudd approved these changes Mar 20, 2026

View reviewed changes

Comment thread user_docs/en/userGuide.md Outdated

Comment thread source/addonHandler/__init__.py Outdated

Comment thread source/gui/addonStoreGui/controls/messageDialogs.py Outdated

Update user_docs/en/userGuide.md

6f5a143

Qchristensen approved these changes Mar 20, 2026

View reviewed changes

Make complex dialog width a named constant

13f7926

SaschaCowley requested a review from seanbudd March 20, 2026 04:16

Move new manifest functions to source/addonStore/models/manifest.py

68333f4

seanbudd approved these changes Mar 23, 2026

View reviewed changes

SaschaCowley merged commit e260538 into beta Mar 23, 2026
72 of 75 checks passed

SaschaCowley deleted the i19550 branch March 23, 2026 05:01

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Link to issue number:

Summary of the issue:

Description of user facing changes:

Description of developer facing changes:

Description of development approach:

Testing strategy:

Known issues with pull request:

Code Review Checklist:

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wmhn1872265132 commented Mar 18, 2026

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CyrilleB79 commented Mar 18, 2026

Checkbox list

About add-on button

Dialog introduction text

Extra note

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SaschaCowley commented Mar 18, 2026 •

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