My gut reaction to this was disappointment that Signal is working on yet another not-messaging feature a la their crypto integration... But the longer I think about it, the more positive I feel. I actually enjoyed using stories on other social media platforms before I left them. The idea of something similar, but end-to-end encrypted, is actually exciting!
The more useful signal becomes to the non tech crowd the better for everyone. Options are good and they are largely competing with WhatsApp although they have tiny market penetration right now
This post seems say that they'd rather avoid the difficult programming challenges of working with the varied devices and protocols people use for communication generally, and just compete with other walled garden apps instead. I wish them luck, but it's a different trajectory than they were on a year or two ago.
It's not a "difficult programming challenge" if you don't even get access to the APIs for the new protocol, I don't think...
But there's also certainly something to be said for deciding where to spend your time. Sure, getting regular SMS right on many different devices might be a difficult programming challenge, but if that means you can't spend time on making sure your service scales, or that people are able to hide their phone number, or... Then that's not laziness, that's making a hard choice.
There is (sometimes?) a way for Signal users to deregister from RCS which should presumably cause other devices to send messages via SMS instead of RCS.
People's Android devices can be opt in to receive messages via RCS based on phone number with either Google or their carrier. If the number is registered via Google, the number can be deregistered using a form. [1] For Verizon, it seems you can call Customer Support at 800-922-0204 to disable RCS. [2] Presumably other carriers have similar options.
Once RCS is disabled at Google/carrier level at the phone number level, other RCS compatible phones will fall back to SMS/MMS for delivering messages, which will cause the Signal app to be able to read messages via Android SMS APIs.
Disabling RCS, which apparently is encrypted with the Signal protocol for G messaging, so that people can continue to comfortably use unencrypted comms (sms) in Signal messenger itself would be a really wild course of action.
Great context, though from an end user's perspective it was clear why and just left hanging with "find a new SMS messaging". The integration made adoption/integrating new users easier by allowing some to have one messaging app with progressive security for contacts on Signal.
Yeah absolutely, messaging wasn't great, although that's a hard thing to get right, especially considering how they have both very technical and pretty non-technical audiences.
I imagine it's a lot of hassle to maintain and outside of the US SMS is basically as dead as landline phones. They probably consulted their usage statistics when they made that decision.
Why? It hasn't changed in years. It's easy to use and glaringly obvious that it's a non-secure conversation. Sometimes I go to add a reaction to an SMS conversation before remembering that those don't work on SMS - the only problem I have ever had with it.
> outside the US
that's a 330m-person population, which is also home to Signal. Not only do I get SMS from people like neighbors and so that I don't especially want to convert, SMS is used to send payment receipts/pickup notes in restaurants, 6 digit verification codes for many websites and so on. If you are outside the US and don't have to deal with SMS congratulations, but for the large number of people in a territory where it is still a key part of digital infrastructure, arbitrarily yanking the feature is a huge pain.
It has though. RCS has come along, which means that you might send an SMS to someone, and their response gets "upgraded" to RCS. If your app doesn't support RCS (and it's impossible to support RCS right now, because the APIs aren't available), you'll never see it.
The choice is between "Keep maintaining the functionality and have people get progressively angrier that their messages are going missing" or "drop it entirely".
Probably because it is dead in a large number of places (e.g. I haven't used SMS in the last 10 years for anything except these automated things that sometimes are sent), and people tend to generalize that to "outside the US".
I had the same thought process. I still use Instagram, but only post stories. It’s fun and less pressure than posts, and get to share fun and irreverent things with friends.
I wish they would improve the app UI instead of focusing on features like this. Compared to other apps I use regularly, Signal feels kind of clunky -- the share dialog takes forever to load from another app compared to Telegram or Messages. The app feels like it's harassing me every single day to update. On open, the app often takes a few seconds of loading in my chats. Makes me wonder what core userbase Signal thinks cares about Stories more than a functional app. Half the reason I started using Telegram a decade ago was simply because it was faster than most other apps!
From my experiences, Signal has the cleanest, most functional UX and design out of nearly all my apps. I have a mid-range Pixel 4a running CalyxOS and it works without hiccups. Not sure why yours is so slow.
Agreed. Android version is slim, and just several days ago I paired up with the Windows desktop version - a UI to die for.
So happy I got several people to a) drop facebook and b) contact me with/ reply to me on signal (I don't use Whatsapp); and they've done the same with others.
Both my kids (under 20) use signal more and more, especially with their new friends at a new school.
Aside: I asked - they, and their friends, don't give an f about twitter.
I am using an absolutely ancient phone (2016 iphone SE) that's perpetually in low power mode, so it's possible that this isn't a big problem for other iOS users. It's also rather slow on my mac, but I have noticed that my partner's 4a runs it smoothly.
I love HN threads where the complainer is knowingly using an old device on power mode, while complaining about performance… all while the responder is using a custom de-googled niche ROM and claiming somehow it works flawlessly.
I always wonder how non-HNers use such software, if even the dedicated people are struggling.
iPhone SE is an extremely powerful phone. AFAIR it uses iPhone 6S CPU. iPhone 7 CPU beat Intel Core i7700K in some benchmarks, just to put a comparison.
Not sure how much degraded battery affects it. I recently got my iPhone 8 degraded because of battery and honestly I didn't notice anything.
Even my old iPhone 4S is a little beast. I remember playing Asphalt racing game. It pushed it to 60 FPS and its graphics was stunning, better than need for speed. If phone can render AAA game at 60 FPS but struggles with some chat app, this chat app does not respect is users. I mean it's just a bunch of grey squares with some text and lame shadows. DOS on i386 could render it fast enough.
Sometimes I can't decide who's more crazy - me who demands adequate performance from simplistic apps or people who accept this state of things.
> iPhone 7 CPU beat Intel Core i7700K in some benchmarks
Ehhh that's a >5 year old CPU. I wouldn't describe it as "extremely powerful" even on a phone.
Anecdotally, going from an iPhone 8 to a 13 pro max was a night and day difference. Not just because the CPU was noticably faster, but because the 120Hz display makes everything more responsive. Sure you don't need that hardware for a chat app but unless some product guy forces the issue, devs aren't even gonna notice fps dropping below 120 because most of them don't use ancient phones.
It blows my mind that people don't just buy new batteries for these. They are CHEAP, under $10 to DIY replace and not very difficult. If you don't feel comfortable following ifixit guide, then any chain shop shouldn't charge more than $50 for the job, it's 15 minutes or less for someone used to doing it.
I have replaced my SE's battery three times, and the screen/front sensors once. The battery is at 100% health as of my latest replacement a couple of weeks ago.
Signal is still my slowest messaging app. It's not some subjective complaint about jank: compared to Telegram and Messages, Signal is much slower to load and share.
+1 Can we please have a changelog? I don't care whether it's in the app or on Github but it shouldn't only appear to Google Play Store users (and only temporarily).
Indeed. A simple example is photo-sharing, a critical function for many people.
Every time you send you have to manually choose if you want higher quality over smaller size. You can't set a default option.
You can crop crop photos, but the crop handles don't work properly and often spring back if you only want to crop in one dimension.
There's an anti-pattern where there's a separate tool selection and tool edit UI on the screen at the same time, so if you are in a hurry and hit 'Save' without hitting 'done' (immediately above it) your changes are discarded.
But if you hit the discard button, you have to confirm it in a modal dialog. It's faster to discard changes by hitting 'save'.
There are pen and highlighter tools so you can draw on an image. but no shape tools, in case you wanted to blank out someone's face.
There's a text tool with some display options. But it's always in the middle of the image. You can move it around, but only after you have typed the text. You can pick color but you can't change the font. It's faster to make a meme online.
You can't use any text effects like italic, bold, or underline either.
Remember how there were going to be blurring tools built in so you could blur faces if you were an activist or journalist? Offered in Beta, never made it to production.
Well, you could just put a sticker over their face, using one of Signal's (extremely cringey) stickers, or by uploading your own. But you can't paste an emoji.
On desktop, you can drag a sticker over the photo with the mouse, and it gets a little '+' in a box to show you're copying the sticker. Then it disappears. Why? Because it was designed for a touch UI and only clicking on a sticker will actually add it.
These are just the problems with image handling/markup. I could make many more lists for other aspects of the app. The markup tools would be kind of superfluous, but it is useful to be able to do thm within the app...only they're implemented in a way that is a source of constant frustration.
If you bring this up with them on Twitter or so people will rush to say 'well Signal is for secure messaging, use an art program if you want fancy image editing lol.' The same people who rush to defend Stories and stickers as 'broadening appeal' while simultaneously saying 'nobody uses SMS anyway' even though SMS is ubiquitous in Signal's home market. It has degenerated into fanboyism at this point.
Fascinating. I strongly prefer Signal's editing tools over Google Photo's. If they shipped it as a standalone app I'd get it.
> Every time you send you have to manually choose if you want higher quality over smaller size. You can't set a default option.
I didn't even notice I wasn't sending high quality images. The setting they picked sends photos such that they look like original quality on my phone screen. If I want to view a photo on a high quality monitor or print it I'd send it some other way.
> There are pen and highlighter tools so you can draw on an image. but no shape tools, in case you wanted to blank out someone's face.
It's pretty easy to scribble it out quickly. I do use a separate app for sensitive redactions.
> It has degenerated into fanboyism at this point.
Fair criticism. My feelings about Signal are similar to my feelings about voting. It obviously sucks, but no one has figured out anything better after quite a few years.
