It's a shame that Signal has discontinued its support for normal SMS, hadn't implemented RCS, is spending too much effort on "stickers" and now keeps prodding you to donate money. Then there's the broken notification with iOS users who just don't find out that you messaged them until they launch the app.
As a direct result my use of Signal has pretty much ceased.
I think they already fixed the IOS notification issue, at least for the beta/testflight version. But yes, I agree with you that their priorities as of late have been head-scratching.
I suppose their focus has been on bringing signal in line with other contemporary messengers to give it a similar level of appeal as something like WhatsApp, targeted towards "regular (and not necessarily privacy focused) people".
I admit i really miss SMS integration, that sort of made it Android's answer to iMessage, except that it's still available cross platform.
Glad for the addition of user names at least.
I can't blame them for asking for money, it's a free app but it isn't free to run.
That said the notifications are royally annoying. My partner has an android, but calls almost never come through and messages are hit and miss.
Same here re. calls not sounding. Or lately, the call connects, but my mic doesn't work. We have to hang up and call back, then it'll work. Infuriating.
What phone do you have? have you taken a look at this? https://dontkillmyapp.com/
In their defence: SMS is not secure enough for Signal standards
This was never the expectation. It provided a unified messaging interface and a shallow barrier to entry for people used to SMS.
I could install Signal on a phone for a neophyte user and they could use it as their normal SMS app. Then you could securely message them in the same interface and all of a sudden their messages between you would be secure.
SMS is not a secure way to communicate and shouldn’t be in Signal, it was a mistake from the beginning.
Another android user here. What you say is true but doesn't matter. I also stopped using Signal when sms was dropped. For some people a unified app that wasn't Google or WhatsApp was what we needed.
I disagree.
Signal is supposed to be a secure alternative to SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, etc. Compatibility with less secure protocols is antithetical to that. Adding popular features of those other apps to be more competitive is how you forward the goal. (Ofc fixing bugs should come first)
It’s a shame that Signal has discontinued its support for normal SMS,
While this does suck for those of us who used it, it was the cause of a few issues:
- It was confusing to less "technical" users.
- Because of point 1, it introduced a security/privacy weakness to its userbase in that users could be tricked into thinking their communications were secure/private.
- The feature was poorly maintained due to the small team behind Signal and the decision to improve their platform vs supporting something they had minimal control over.
- Signal's SMS feature was causing real-life delivery issues with some new users as RCS started rolling out. A user's phone would register with RCS - and if they installed signal -which then takes over SMS messaging but couldn't (thanks to Google) support RCS - they would stop receiving RCS messages. This is a problem caused by Google to their benefit.
hadn’t implemented RCS,
Signal cannot implement RCS on Android without Google providing an API like they did with SMS. Apple doesn't even allow alternative SMS clients so this made no sense going forward - basically SMS/MMS/RCS is a dead-end for Signal.
is spending too much effort on “stickers”
What year is this? Signal stickers were released at the end of 2019 [0] and, in the nearly five years since, the work to maintain them is so small it may as well be zero. Check github - the work they release is public and you can see exactly what they've been working on.
and now keeps prodding you to donate money.
Its a free service, god forbid they ask users to contribute so they can continue to exist and provide said service to those who can't afford it? 🤷♀️
Then there’s the broken notification with iOS users who just don’t find out that you messaged them until they launch the app.
Valid criticism IF true. I don't have an iOS device so I can't say much here but I do message iOS users pretty frequently and haven't had any problem with response times - not sure if that's because they're always on their phone or because notifications work in most cases.
As a direct result my use of Signal has pretty much ceased.
While unfortunate for your privacy, if you were primarily using Signal for SMS, you weren't really using Signal to begin with.
Is there some more context to this? I'm curious
Amazon was caught hiding evidence by using Signal - most larger orgs have a pretty strict policy (with mandatory yearly trainings) that remind users not to use non-company approved messaging apps because of this specific reason. There's all kinds of rules, regulations and laws that may have been broken by them using a service like Signal.
