Title: Customizable/extendable columns in device overview lists (e.g. show FQDN, Comments, Group) + Bug: FQDN gets cleared and locked after saving Comments field

[Gaspode-1974]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing open and closed issues

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

The device overview tables (e.g. "All Devices") currently show a fixed set of columns (Icon, Name, Type, Last IP, Status, MAC, Source, Actions). Many other useful fields already exist per device — Group, Location, Comments, FQDN, Owner, etc. — but none of them can be shown as a column in these list views. To see e.g. a device's FQDN or Group, I have to open each device's detail page individually or export the whole database to CSV, which is not practical when I just want a quick overview across many devices.

Describe the solution you'd like

Allow users to choose which existing device fields are displayed as columns in the device overview tables — similar to how many asset-management or ticketing tools let you toggle column visibility via a "Manage columns" option. Ideally this would be a per-view setting (e.g. persisted per user/browser) so different views (All Devices, My Devices, Network Devices, etc.) can show different relevant fields without affecting the underlying data.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• Exporting all devices via CSV (Maintenance > Backup/Restore) and viewing/filtering the extra columns in a spreadsheet. This works but is a manual, disconnected process — it's a static snapshot, not a live view, and requires leaving the app.
• Using Comments or Group fields to informally track extra info (e.g. a host's external domain). But this isn't visible without opening each device individually, defeating the purpose of an overview table.

Anything else?

While testing workarounds for this (using Comments to note a device's external FQDN), I ran into a related issue: editing only the Comments field on a device that already has an FQDN set (auto-detected via DIGSCAN/AVAHISCAN) causes the FQDN field to be cleared and revert to its locked/auto-managed state after saving — even though FQDN wasn't touched in the edit. This might be worth a separate bug report, but flagging it here since it's directly related to my use case of wanting FQDN visible/manageable at the list level.

Am I willing to test this? 🧪

• I will do my best to test this feature on the netlertx-dev image when requested within 48h and report bugs to help deliver a great user experience for everyone and not to break existing installations.

Can I help implement this? 👩‍💻👨‍💻

• Yes
• No

[jokob-sk]

Hi there,

Thanks for the suggestion. Have you tried adjusting the UI_device_columns setting?

[Gaspode-1974]

Hi, thanks a lot for the quick reply!

UI_device_columns looks like exactly what I was after, and it does let me add most of the fields I was missing (FQDN, Group, etc.) — much appreciated 🙏

One thing I noticed while trying it out: Comments doesn't seem to be available in the list of selectable columns. Would it be possible to add it? That's actually the field I was originally using to note down extra info (like a host's external domain) before I found FQDN, so having it available as a column too would be great.

Thanks again for the fast turnaround!

[jokob-sk]

Thanks for the reply! Could you please let me know a bit more about how you went about researching how to modify the displayed columns?

I’m trying to understand how I could make this configuration option more discoverable for users, so it would be really helpful to know which documentation pages you looked at, what you searched for, or any other resources/approaches you used.

Thanks!

[jokob-sk]

I wasn’t able to reproduce the bug you described. If you’re still experiencing the issue, could you please open a separate bug report with any relevant details and steps to reproduce it?

[jokob-sk]

The devComments columns should be available for selection in the next release.

It would be great if you could test the ghcr.io/netalertx/netalertx-dev-unsafe Docker image in ~15 minutes (or once the latest GitHub Action finishes).

⚠️ Please back up everything first, or ideally spin up a separate container (make sure you use a unique PORT and GRAPHQL_PORT if running instances concurrently) with its own DB and config (a copy of your current setup), as database changes may occur.

After updating:

• Click the 🔄 refresh button in the blue header at the top
• Hard refresh your browser cache (shift + reload) to force js and css files reload

👉 If I don’t receive confirmation that this works, I may revert the changes to avoid introducing bugs.

Disclaimer: Running the dev container long-term may lead to data loss, as upgrade paths are not guaranteed.

Thanks in advance,
j

[Gaspode-1974]

Thanks for the detailed follow-up!

Honestly, finding UI_device_columns wasn't methodical — I searched the docs and skimmed GitHub release notes for anything about columns or device list config, and ran into the v25.2.8 notes on UI_columns_filters. That's what got me looking at similarly-named settings. If it's hard to discover, it's probably because nothing in the app itself points to it — no mention near the Devices view settings or the help icons. Might be worth linking it from there.

I'll open a separate bug report for the FQDN/Comments issue with steps to reproduce, shortly.

On the dev image — I'll pass on this one for now. It's a spare-time homelab project and I just don't have room right now for a proper isolated test setup with its own DB and ports. I'll test on my regular instance once it hits a stable release and flag it if devComments is still missing.

Thanks for jumping on this so fast.