I've converted a lot of people to Signal and I'm 100% sure that they will abandon it, they only want 1 messenger app.
Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)
31–40 of 649 posts
Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)
#32Why doesn't anybody fork the Signal clients? There are so many bad design decision in the clients (for instance no message backup on iOS or no way to save all media to storage automatically) that I don't understand why people accept the Signal Foundation's stewardship of the client code.
Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)
#33One Signal feature that I always wanted, and will apparently never get, was the ability to send the same message via SMS & data, and have the duplicate cancel out on the other end. Service is spotty in my region, and I routinely have either cellular or data connectivity.
Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)
#34I'm very upset by this decision. I've been using Signal as my SMS app for a very long time.
Messages that I would have sent via SMS currently will automatically get sent via Signal if the person I'm sending to has started using Signal without my knowledge. This has happened in several instances where I was pleasantly surprised to see a friend had started using Signal. Now that I'm forced into a separate SMS app, this will no longer be a possibility. I certainly won't be firing up Signal to see if a contact has joined before sending them an SMS.
Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)
#35Oof. As an Android user, this sucks. Though I have my frustrations with Signal (cellphone number, address book hashing, centralization, the cryptocurrency stuff, removing storage encryption) -- it's still the only app I trust. Even more than the stock Samsung messaging app. I don't want to trust another, and I don't want to have to bifurcate my messaging flow.
All of my family use iOS though, so this is already their use case. I understand less code is more secure, and a unified codebase between devices is good -- heck. This might even lead to no more phone number requirement.
But this still stinks for my use case.
FWIW though, I was more upset about the cryptocurrency thing.
Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)
#36I completely disagree and am disappointed in this decision. One app on my phone to handle all my messages is easier than making a context switch per-contact. I also think it'll hurt the value proposition when getting people to join signal. Not overcomplicating the messaging scenario was a big winner to do that.
You couldn't have one messenger for all contacts before, except you forced everyone to either signal or sms
Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)
#37I am unhappy with this change, but I can cope with it. I'm more concerned with my tech-challenged family members who don't understand the distinction between different messaging services or have any understanding of security. Until now, Signal has been good for them because they only need to deal with one application and they get some added security among our group. After this change, I fear they'll just use the SMS app exclusively (out of inertia) and Signal will collect dust.
Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)
#38[deleted]
Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)
#39Why doesn't anybody fork the Signal clients? There are so many bad design decision in the clients (for instance no message backup on iOS or no way to save all media to storage automatically) that I don't understand why people accept the Signal Foundation's stewardship of the client code.
There are forked clients, but usually you can't use Signal's server infrastructure, so you need to roll your own, and now it brings another set of problems.
Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)
#40> If you do use Signal as your default SMS app on Android, you will need to select a new default SMS app on your phone. If you want to keep them, you’ll also need to export your SMS messages from Signal into that new app.
This messaging seems a little tone-deaf, given that there is no way to export SMS messages from Signal. Apparently it's possible, using a third-party piece of software, to decrypt your backups and extract the messages, but that's not exactly a reasonable thing to expect people to do.
One of the reasons I liked Signal was because it was easy to get normal people to start using it, because they could just set it up as their SMS app, and continue life as normal, just getting the benefits of encryption for any of their contacts that were also using Signal. Now there's not notably any reason to use Signal as opposed to, say, Matrix.