I have sent the following request to the Capture One development team. If you agree, please send them the same request; only if they receive a deluge, will they implement the added functionality. Many thanks.
The lower panel of the viewer contains information: ISO, shutter speed, f-stop, focal length; file name (and variant number); color tag and star rating. There is a lot of real estate in the lower panel that could contain additional user-selected information that would be extremely helpful. In addition to the existing very useful data displayed in the lower viewer panel, the user should have the option to select specific metadata to be displayed: e.g. keywords, title, camera, lens, date-time, etc. The lower panel could display additional lines if more space is required to display all of the user-selected metadata. This is a request that should be fairly simple to implement and would be extremely useful. Please pass this request to the Capture One Pro software development team. I look forward to seeing this added functionality in the next release of COP8. Many thanks for your support.
Independent from your posting I had already sent this feature request using practically the same points you raised here (lots of unused real estate, add a second line if possible etc.).
I think the Phase One folks are really listening to our requests and we should all keep on sending them out!