Contact Signal Support

I was a very happy customer of this app since I found out about it but the insane race to the lowest common denominator, adding “stickers” to an app whose main purpose is secure and reliable communications have broken the application. Messages do not send, or send after hours, and in one epic case over a day later. No other application has an issue connecting to the internet or sending messages, including WhatsApp and FB Messenger. The “sending” icon gets stuck and nothing happens. If you go to the settings, you can see the “network status” switching between “connected” “connecting” and “offline” And before anyone blames my settings, I made sure the app has all the recommended rights, low battery mode is disabled and no app or connection restrictions are set on the app. This happens on both WiFi and LTE, so it is not tied to a bad WiFi or data connection, especially since I have tested it on multiple WiFi networks and not just my home one. So, tl; dr, add stickers, make communications impossible. Great move , I hope people enjoy their little cats and stuff while I look for a proper secure communications app...

I don’t know if this disfunction is related to the particular phone (iPhone XR) that I am using Signal on now or if it is the same on other phones, but the “cursor” control on Signal is a disaster now. It is a nightmare trying to move the cursor to where you want it, or to highlight a specific section of your message. I am completely unable to move the cursor more than a couple lines away from its current location at a time (and the text window doesn’t extend to more than 4 lines tall), so i have to scroll a couple lines away, click somewhere to move the cursor in the direction of where i want it to go, and repeat over and over again until it finally gets there. If i try to move it further than that, the window just jumps back to the area where it is currently located and moves it to some random location nearby. Highlighting a portion of your message is impossible; it jumps from one end of the message to the other and will not allow you to scroll slowly to where you want to stop highlighting. It is so stupid ~ I recommend typing messages in another app and then pasting it into signal when you are done. Also, FYI, if you want to copy text from a signal message, hold your finger on the message and then click on the little icon at the bottom of the screen that looks like two pieces of paper - nothing will ever appear that says “copy”.

Lots of features (Gify, stickers, reacts, self destructing messages), but it requires you to give out your phone number to everyone you talk to, does not allow specifying a different server, and beyond those privacy concerns, it has gone downhill lately in terms of usability and security as well. It now it forces a PIN even if you don’t want one. Private keys are sent through the server to enable moving from one device to another. Signal used to store private keys in hardware and it was impossible to export them. This ensured that nobody could ever covertly get your key. They removed this security protection and do not even provide an option to use the more secure key storage. The Signal developers could have enabled a smooth device transfer and kept the keys in hardware by having the old key sign the new one so others will 1.) know that the new key is new 2.) know that it is legitimate, and 3.) be able to verify the move using another communication channel if they suspect something is amiss. The Signal developers decided against this. Given the developers’ recent decisions, and their unwillingness to allow people to use their system without divulging their phone numbers, earns this app 3 stars. If they put more focus on privacy, security, and allowed connecting to private servers, it could easily be a 5-star app.