Unsynced wallet status should be more apparent #8060

Currently the wallet shows warning triangles on the "Overview" page when the client is not synced.

Looking at the volume of mail I receive from people confused by unsynced client behavior, as well as issues like #7235 this is not enough.

I think it would make sense to:

• Make the warning look more serious. E.g. make the icons red or yellow instead of the same color as the rest.
• The warning should appear on every page, not just Overview but also when receiving or sending transactions. Possibly on the bottom bar.
• Mouseover should warn that:
  • Transactions are not up to date - most notably, received transactions more recent than the current synchronization time are not yet visible. This should be made really, really clear.
  • Balance is not up to date - it does already say this implicitly by showing the triangle next to the balance and recent transactions, but not everyone picks up this hint.
  • Fee estimation is not up to date/incomplete - maybe we need a separate warning for this on the "Send" page.

Agree with @laanwj. I pick this up.

@laanwj how do you envision this? I'm interested in implementing it, but I don't see a way that's not massively redundant. We already have the sync progress bar and the text warning to the left of it.

What do you think about adding a red or yellow caution to the right of the warning text, to draw attention to it? That seems to best fit with what already exists. Augmenting instead of duplicating. I could change the mouse over text from the sync bar/text to reflect the extra warnings you describe, and add this mouse over to the new warning icon as well.

How does all that sound?

@Tyler-Hardin sounds good to me!

I have a different approach: If you start, or getting in a state where your Bitcoin-Core GUI is "out-of-sync", we could overlay the MainWindow with an info-layer (maybe slightly semi-transparent) that could inform about the out-of-sync state (warning with some text), the required blocks to catch up, maybe current blocks-per-seconds rate, etc.

Users could "click-away" that modal information layer. But at least a click-away action is required. Once the layer has been clicked away, we could go back to the current state where we show the exclamation mark warning icons

Sound good as well. Make sure to include a "[ ] Never show this again" toggle.

Most of this was done in #8371. Not sure if those should be addressed:

(copied from OP)

• Transactions are not up to date - most notably, received transactions more recent than the current synchronization time are not yet visible. This should be made really, really clear.
• Balance is not up to date - it does already say this implicitly by showing the triangle next to the balance and recent transactions, but not everyone picks up this hint.
• Fee estimation is not up to date/incomplete - maybe we need a separate warning for this on the "Send" page.

Hm, doesn't the overlay take care of all of those? I don't mind that they're not specifically implemented as mentioned there, that was just an idea.

It is missing the fee estimation part, but I think this can be done later.