Downloading models takes a long time with no visual indicator in napari

[psobolewskiPhD]

On first run, there is a significant time spent downloading models.
In fact, it seems all models are downloaded, not just the selected one—it took ~5 min on my machine, just now.
While there are progress indicators in the terminal (I launched napari from terminal), there is no visible indicator in napari that something is happening.
Ideally, napari would show in the activity monitor that it is working.
Also, if possible, only the selected model would be downloaded.
Thus the user would know what's up—that it's not broken—and the process would be quicker, since only 1 model would be downloaded.

[kandarpksk]

On a related note, after clicking 'run segmentation', I only see progress in the terminal (if at all). Ideally it would (also) be visible somewhere in napari or the embedded console.

[tlambert03]

I'm not sure how much maintenance this plugin is getting. If either of you are interested in working on it, I can help review and merge, but unfortunately don't have time to implement these things at the moment

[psobolewskiPhD]

I've been meaning to take a look at trying some progress bars...
I'm willing to help and should have a bit more time starting this weekend, but probably will need some pointers/advice.
Also, @kandarpksk depending what you need, @guiwitz has a very nice cellpose plugin too:
https://github.com/guiwitz/napari-serialcellpose

[kandarpksk]

Thanks Talley, Peter! I'm a user experience researcher who recently joined the Imaging team at CZI and am just exploring napari and some plugins (and making issues or comments based on my experience). Happy to provide feedback/UX guidance, but most likely won't be working on code myself.

[tlambert03]

ok thanks :) as a heads up, I think you'll find that, in most cases, plugin developers are painfully well aware of the shortcomings of their UI 😂 so it's generally not a lack of awareness that leads to poor UI/UX, but more the fact that, for the majority of plugin devs, this is a side gig to the "real" job of actually getting science done with the plugins. we desperately need code help