I was under the impression that Signal could handle SMS and RCS and be a replacement for a phones messaging app. Am I misguided or is Signal more of an WhatsApp alternative that I can only communicate with people already on Signal
The latter is true unfortunately. Because of understandable security reasons they gave up the SMS integration about a year ago since it’s unencrypted and not a good fit to the security standards of signal.
Until there is some form of open interconnection between messaging apps there will be no end to WhatsApp.
Don’t get me wrong, signal is a great alternative, but it does not achieve more then it’s core value of security, and this will never be enough.
Wish someone would make a convenience focused secure messenger. I want SMS and RCS and interoperability with everyone, but I also want my conversations that matter to be completely secure.
I don’t care if my chat with Grandma is e2e encrypted but I do care that my chat with my wife is, and it fucks me off I have to use so many different apps to speak to different people who will never, ever use Signal.
I used to use Signal as an SMS client because almost nobody I chatted with (and nobody that mattered) used it. My wife and I now use SMS because we can’t agree on a separate app, and that sucks because that’s the main thing I’d like to be encrypted. My wife wants me on Discord, and I’d like her to go to Matrix, so we settle on SMS.
What I’d really like is to be able to receive SMS messages on my desktop in the same app that I use for secure communication. So if I use Signal as an SMS client on my phone, all of those messages would be sent to my other clients encrypted, and all responses would go through my phone. I think that would add a ton of value and basically get you to an iMessage-like experience. I was hoping Matrix would do something similar, but it seems that’s not the case (maybe I’ll try building it, idk).
I’d just be happy if there was a way to restore my messages from Android to iOS (or vice-versa). I’m going to lose my messages from the past 4 years because of this. And it’s been an open request with the devs for 5 years now.
Yeah, they seem to put a lot of energy into esoteric features, when the app is in serious need of some quality of life improvements. I donate a tiny monthly sum to the project and honestly feel conflicted about how effectively it’s being used.
Like the checking for messages notification on Android, I use notification reminder app to remind me of missed messages (ring every 5 minutes) and sometimes randomly in the middle of the night Signal creates a notification that says “checking for messages” and it stays there for a while getting my notification remjnder to think there is an unread message and ringing in the middle of the night. I can’t turn off notifications I might need to be waken up for important stuff.
I think it might have a good reason to post that notification. Android kills apps that are doing background operations for too long without also posting a persistent notification about it.
You can disable the notification channel corresponding to that kind of notification, though. I’m not totally sure if that way your other app won’t see it either, but I think it’s worth a try.
Or maybe chat history just isn’t that important overall. I can do backups just fine on android but have only used that once. I wouldn’t be too concerned if I lost all of my chats, as I’ve already read them.
The core security and privacy features are what’s most important. I’d prefer they keep those as the top priority.
A lot of people use this as an SMS replacement, cool story that you don’t use it that way, but there are plenty of people that do. And the fact that it can also take over and send normal SMS and not just signal means people have more tightly integrated it.
It’s hard to tell what chats you’ll want to retain, so people will just use the other app…
On the other hand, I usually know ahead of time when I don’t want a certain conversation saved. Even if I don’t, I can delete a message for everyone right after something is sent. That stuff won’t get backed up.
Retaining data for years is not.
I don’t see why this is the case? Sure deleting your data completely is always more private than keeping it, but why would it be that much worse keeping it. If the information is important, people will keep it in other forms instead (ex. insecure chat app, personal notes, text messages).
are you 14? People have a lot of reasons to archive their communication: forgotten conversations, random details, family, memories, relationship, business,
But I can understand why an edgy teenager won’t have any of those.
I search through my chats pretty often, both on Signal and things like FB Messenger. Sometimes I want a link that was sent, sometimes I want to review something we talked about, or sometimes I need to figure out when something happened and I can do that by checking when I talked about it with a close friend.
It’s ok if you don’t use it, but it’s important to a lot of people
Even backups on android could be simpler, such as automatically storing the backup file on a cloud drive. Right now we need to set that up manually with a separate app.
Also while history isn’t important for you, it IS important for other people. If I couldn’t do the bare minimum with backups, I’d probably have dropped signal. I know some friends didn’t take up Signal just because of chat history reasons (iOS, couldn’t set up cloud backups on android, etc.)
One stupid thing I’ve come across…you can either choose per contact or overall what the chat bubble color is, but when I do so, MY chat bubbles are colored and everyone else’s are grey. That seems backwards to me. If I want to do “Pink is this person, blue is that person, green is that person” it ends up going “wait whose end of the conversation is this again?”
Does someone have a patent they’re trying not to infringe?
Although I have no use for storing chat history, SimpleX Chat has an (encrypted) database export feature that should, as far as I know, let you keep your chat history forever so long as you back it up.
Plus this refusal to allowing Chats to Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger now that EU forced meta to open this up…
I know the devs are not happy about meta tracking everything on their end but why can’t this be a users choice to enable communication with no-signal servers as well?
Did Signal devs openly refuse making use of that? Honestly I think it’s understandable.
They are marketing the app as a very-very secure messaging app, but all the security with no exception would go out of the window if you were to send or receive a message from messenger.
And they are also making it very-very easy, because - as bad as it sounds - a lot of people don’t understand what is encryption, what are platforms, and they don’t even care to get to know about it, and because of that, these users would have no idea that their chats with messenger users is not encrypted.
Well I didn’t found anything regarding this on GitHub. And to be honest I only find some german language articles about this speaking of an announcement that signal don’t likes the idea enabling Chats with WhatsApp… so I assume this comes from Twitter.
Like I said turn it of by default so that only people who activity made the decision can be chat with WhatsApp. Also showing a hint in the chat that this account is not on a signal server should also not be that hard to implement.
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