r/signal

Are voice notes in Signal more secure than written messages? If no, why not? If yes, why?

Basically title. In order to unblock someone, I have to click “unblock” and then it asks me to accept the message request.

Doesn’t the person get an alert if I accept the message request?

I want to unblock the contact but not necessarily send an alert about it.

Back in 2017, the Signal Chrome/web app was discontinued when the standalone desktop app launched, and it was officially deprecated.

Now, almost 10 years later, is there any possibility we might see a web client return in the near future?

I know it was phased out originally due to browser security concerns and sandbox limitations, but web tech and security standards have evolved a lot since then. Other secure messengers like Threema have managed to build functional web clients using modern workarounds and session models.

Signal is incredible, but not having a browser version can be frustrating, especially on work computers and managed machines where installing custom desktop software isn't permitted.

Curious to hear thoughts from the community or if anyone has heard of any updates/discussions around this!

I'd like to keep a backup of 6+ years/~10gb of important messages off of my Android device (GrapheneOS Pixel 8 Pro) in case I ever lose it. However, when I connect to Windows laptop and try selecting the SignalBackups folder to copy and paste it gets stuck on 'Calculating the time required to copy the files' without actually transferring anything. Is there a solution to moving the backup files? I see a pretty techy, command line version of a Github program called SignalBackup Tools, but I don't really need the ability to decrypt and read messages on my laptop - this would just be an off-device backup that I could reload on my phone if I ever lose or destroy it. Having an on-device only backup seems to be fairly useless.

I'm on iOS, my friend was tying to send a video, and said the lock wasn't there. I couldn't believe it. I though, if anything, if there was some reason for this, the compromise would at least be that press and hold would lock recording, and touching it again would stop the recording (allowing photos to be taken with the same button).

Looking for any information, explanation, or solution.

Thanks.

Hello all. Somehow I derped and instead of removing a single message from notes to myself I removed the whole thread. Which is very bad, as there was a lot of stuff there accumulated through the years.

I have offline daily backups done at 04:00, the deletion happened today at after 21:00. I have written to and received messages from other people during the day.

My question is: given signalbackup-tools and backups from today's early morning (notes still existing, today's other conversations not having happened yet) and tomorrow's early morning (notes missing, but today's other conversations existing), is it possible to somehow merge them and have those notes back?

I understand that this might not be fully possible if Signal flags messages to oneself (notes) as deleted as well (in this case they would get restored and deleted immediately at best), though if possible, it would be ideal.

Plan B, if the first one is impossible, would be to extract them from database and re-send them in a format like "<original timestamp>: [original message]".

How would you propose to do it? Any particular possible problems I should be aware of? How to deduplicate the most of the database so I don't end up with all messages appearing twice?

Sorry for the chaotic post - this incident proves I'm not at my best today :P.

So I was at a concert and ran out of storage on my phone. In my haste to free up storage, I deleted signal. Now, I can't get back into my old account. The thing is, I have my iPad linked to my OG signal and it's still logged in. How can I use my linked iPad to get back into my primary account on my phone?

A lot of group chat names are set by an admin that don’t have much meaning for all parties involved. For example if I have a group chat with my grandparents, I’d love to be able to name that “grandparents“ just for me, without impacting how they see it.

Does using Molly, which is a fork of Signal, violate the Signal Terms of Service?

I dont know what's under the hood of either app, I'm no coder. Just wondered if it was theoretically possible to have a feature which allows for importing third party app chats, into Signal, purely for viewing.

Perhaps visually it would be in the drop down menu > archived chats > WhatsApp.

Some people keep WhatsApp not only for the people who refuse to migrate, but also for the chat histories they've amassed over the years.

If there was a way to view those chats, it might be another carrot to entice people. Though if Meta paying Nazis isn't doing it... What will?

Just noticed this setting on my iPhone. It sounds like a good thing to enable. But curious why it’s not automatic. Put it this way - what’s the reason someone would not want this enabled?

I think I have a very unique problem. I say that because I've searched and couldn't find anything.

I don't have cell reception at my work so I have to use the company wifi. Signal used to work just fine until recently. Now when I try to send a message, the sending circle spins and spins until I leave work and am back on a cell tower. I'll also get notifications from Signal saying I may have new messages, but nothing's ever there when I open the app.

I asked the head of IT about it - thinking the IP addresses Signal uses might be blocked but she said it's not on their ban list.

I also use Beeper on my phone as an aggregator when I don't feel like shuffling apps. It's very convenient to have access to everything on my personal computer in one place. The weird part is that the Signal bridge in Beeper works perfectly fine at my work... But Signal won't. Why???

I could just say to hell with it and use Beeper exclusively, but I really don't like the interface.

I do run a VPN on my phone because my data is none of my work's business. I have split tunneling to exclude both Beeper and Signal. I thought that might've been the issue, but even with the VPN on, Signal won't work, but Beeper does 🤷🏻‍♂️

To further complicate the issue, Signal works at my office if the VPN is completely off. But Signal used to work at my office with the VPN set to split tunneling until recently.

Any ideas?

I have a Samsung S25U running Android 16/OneUI 8.5. My VPN is Windscribe which is the only one I can get to work at my office. I've tried a bunch of others but they all seem to be on the company's ban list.

Issue: Unable to start device‑to‑device transfer.

Signal version: 8.22.2 on both devices (same issue previously with 8.21.5 and 8.21.6)

Platform: Android → Android

When I start the transfer on the sending device via

Settings → Account → Transfer account, it begins searching for a nearby device.However, the receiving device immediately shows a QR code instead of appearing as a nearby device.Because of this mismatch, the transfer cannot be initiated.

I have a friend that everytime he hears about encryption and privacy, laughs and says something like “you are naive if you think companies don’t have backdoors to read encrypted messages in case the government needs to”. He is referring to signal, whatsapp, proton, ente (everything with e2ee).

He is in the army. I never know how to give an argument. Can someone give me ideas on how to discuss this encryption subject with someone like him?

How come Signal can not be selected as a default calling app on iPhone? You can select from: Cellular; FaceTime Audio and Zoom (EWWWW) and even WhatsApp (DOUBLE EWWWW).

Settings < Apps < Calling

I can't be the only one running into this. Signal takes up close to 10 GB on my phone. That's obscene. I'd like to use disappearing messages to help manage that but the maximum duration is 4 weeks. Why can't we have more options under custom? I'd like 3 months for one group.

Secondly, there's no way to erase media used by a group. I'd like to keep the messages but delete the large media.

How are others coping with this? I don't really want to click and delete each photo or video manually. Is disappearing messages the only way?

why are my friends no able to find me by my username? they only can find me by my phone number

NODE_ENV production 
NODE_CONFIG_DIR /opt/Signal Beta/resources/app.asar/config 
NODE_CONFIG {} 
ALLOW_CONFIG_MUTATIONS undefined 
HOSTNAME *** 
NODE_APP_INSTANCE undefined 
SUPPRESS_NO_CONFIG_WARNING undefined 
SIGNAL_ENABLE_HTTP undefined
 userData: /home/***/.config/Signal Beta 
[3133:0815/144439.356715:ERROR:dbus/object_proxy.cc:572] Failed to call method: org.freedesktop.systemd1.Manager.StartTransientUnit: object_path= /org/freedesktop/systemd1: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.InvalidArgs: Invalid unit name or type. 
(node:3133) [DEP0180] DeprecationWarning: fs.Stats constructor is deprecated. (Use signal-desktop-beta --trace-deprecation ... to show where the warning was created) 
2026-08-15 14:44:39.806: ERROR CORE sqlcipher_page_cipher: hmac check failed for pgno=1 2026-08-15 14:44:39.806: ERROR CORE sqlite3Codec: error decrypting page 1 data: 1 
2026-08-15 14:44:39.806: ERROR CORE sqlcipher_codec_ctx_set_error 1 
2026-08-15 14:44:39.824: ERROR CORE sqlcipher_page_cipher: hmac check failed for pgno=1 2026-08-15 14:44:39.824: ERROR CORE sqlite3Codec: error decrypting page 1 data: 1 
2026-08-15 14:44:39.824: ERROR CORE sqlcipher_codec_ctx_set_error 1 [3133:0815/144443.671571:ERROR:ui/gfx/x/atom_cache.cc:234] Add application/vnd.portal.filetransfer to kAtomsToCache 
[3133:0815/144443.673094:ERROR:ui/gfx/x/atom_cache.cc:234] Add application/vnd.portal.files to kAtomsToCache

Any thoughts? Try a downgrade to the non-beta?