Appearance
Message Details
Message Details adds a sidebar beside a conversation in Voxel's Messages (VX) inbox, showing who the visitor is talking to and everything that has been shared in that thread — the panel most modern chat apps have.
It's enabled per widget in Elementor, with a separate switch for each section.
Setup
- Edit the page or template containing the Messages (VX) widget
- Open Content → Message Details (VT)
- Turn on Enable details sidebar
Widen the container first
The panel takes its width from the conversation area. Give the container the widget sits in roughly the panel width (300px by default) of extra room, or the chat itself gets cramped. The editor shows this reminder next to the setting.
Sections
| Section | Shows |
|---|---|
| Profile | The other party's avatar and name, linking to their profile |
| Media | Every image shared in the conversation, as a thumbnail grid |
| Files | Every non-image attachment, with its filename and date |
| Links | Every URL sent in the conversation, grouped by domain |
Each section can be switched off independently, so you can show only what fits your site.
Media, Files and Links cover the whole conversation — not only the messages currently loaded on screen. The inbox loads messages fifteen at a time, so a long thread's earlier attachments would otherwise be invisible.
Settings
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Panel title | Heading at the top of the panel |
| Show profile / media / files / links | One switch per section |
| Section open by default | Which section is expanded when a conversation opens |
| Thumbnails before "Show all" | How many media thumbnails to show before the expand link |
| Overlay below (px) | Viewport width under which the panel becomes an overlay |
Behaviour on narrow screens
Above the configured width the panel is docked beside the conversation. Below it, the panel moves off-canvas and opens over the chat from a button added to the conversation header, styled as a native inbox header button. Voxel's inbox already collapses to a single pane on mobile, so this keeps the same feel.
Privacy
The panel never shows anything the viewer can't already see in the thread. Three separate Voxel mechanisms are respected, per viewer:
- Messages the sender deleted are excluded
- Messages the recipient hid are excluded for that recipient
- Anything removed with Clear messages is excluded, from that side only
So if a user clears a conversation, its media and links disappear from their panel while remaining in the other party's.
Photos open in the same lightbox the chat bubbles use, so tapping a thumbnail behaves exactly as tapping the image in the conversation does.
Styling
Everything is controllable under Style → Message Details (VT): panel width, background, border, padding, avatar size, profile name typography and colour, section heading typography and colour, divider colour, thumbnail radius, and link colour.
Notes
- The panel only appears once a conversation is open — there is nothing to show on an empty inbox.
- Links are read from message text; nothing is stored separately, so links in older conversations appear immediately.
- Enabling the sidebar also corrects the Messages (VX) widget's Elementor panel, which previously opened on the Style tab instead of Content.