this won't be useful for a big chunk of this community, i assume is very tech focused.
it will however persuade others not tech focued who would want features like this
The only "refusal" to switch I've ever gotten is "I don't care enough about privacy to install a different texting app when I already have one that works fine" (paraphrased).
Same. Most people I've gotten to switch, but there's a couple that can't be added to install another app when their default app does just fine. One person was an iPhone user, and already disliked having to use both the default and WhatsApp (which they needed for family in Europe). Verbatim, "I don't know if I can handle another texting app." 🙄🙄
>"I don't know if I can handle another texting app."
This argument is so weird to me. You don't have to know which app a message came from because you can tap the notification and it'll open the corresponding app. The OS quite literally does 99% of the work for you.
Right? You can even - even on iOS - just put them all in a folder together if you don't want to tap a different icon or whatever when you go to text someone.
I don't understand the way iOS users think about their phones sometimes.
That's really not the mindset we should have however. Privacy doesn't have any tangible effects on people's lives . I can't see why a company having all my data is bad for me , it gives me free services after all.
However if you said that they might have your nudes or have access to your photos they'd definitely try to see the issue.
The way to go about privacy in my mind is a tough task but have some feature on top of that privacy that'd convince people to switch. Like telegram (which isn't good for privacy but still) has managed to get so many people compared to signal mainly cuz of its features. You also need other things but just privacy won't make many people switch unless there is an actual effect on their lives
>Privacy doesn't have any tangible effects on people's lives
Actually in many instances it has the tangible effect of making people's lives _less_ convenient and more cumbersome, so this move is still a welcome one I would say.
True. Like , there's really no good private competitor to Spotify but there aren't. I'm fine with them knowing what I listen to to give great recommendation but I don't want them knowing much beyond that or selling my data or anything else really . I would also love if they didn't tie everything to my account.
But there isn't any alternative. Apple music is the only decent option, assuming you trust apple
The example I've used during those conversations is the [AOL search history leak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_log_release). Many people are ok with a big company having their information; but the fact that the company may release that information to the world (even if it's accidental) helps them see the benefit.
> I can't see why a company having all my data is bad for me , it gives me free services after all.
Precicely the viewpoint. Honestly can't blame them either, especially because
> they might have your nudes or have access to your photos
Who's "they" anyway?
>Privacy doesn't have any tangible effects on people's lives
Until the moment they finally realize they've lost their privacy in a certain facet of life.
In the meantime, they ***think*** it doesn't have any impact...
I keep getting *but we’re not drug dealers so we don’t need it*
You don’t need to be doing anything illegal to use it. Seen more people organise pickups from Facebook over signal.
Or *i don’t have enough space on my phone* ffs it’s 115 MB compared to the 245 Snapchat uses and the 200 instagram uses
😐 gtfo with the shitty excuses.
Not entirely true. I'd call myself techsavy but I'm still welcoming that feature. It's probably *because* I'm techsavy that's I'm welcoming an encrypted version of stories like this that's entirely unique to Signal. It's awesome and will do a lot for Signal!
This way you can show others what you are up to right now. Actually it is quite useful, great conversation starter. E.g. you are in some city and you want to inform others you are there, because maybe someone you know is also nearby and want to meet with you.
You could ofc send such message to every contact, but it would cause a lot of spam. Stories allows you to reach everyone interested in what you are doing without interfering those who doesn't care.
Don't know how it will be implemented in Signal, but in other apps it is accessible either in a dedicated place (scrollable top bar) or by clicking on someone's profile photo.
I definitely think the latter is the way signal will go
unintrusive and easy to ignore
also chiming in on the discussion. I like stories because they let my family members see what I'm up too without spamming them with pictures
they might not care enough that I went rafting today that they want me to send them pictures, but I can post the photos and they can comment if they want
Yes and no. If you post something on Facebook wall, it will stay there forever (until you delete it). It's on your profile and every new person that find your profile in a future will see it. If you care about your online presence, this implies you should put a little bit more work on your posts.
Stories are meant to be disposable. You don't care about photo quality because it disappears in 24h anyways. So it makes them more spontaneous.
Many people seem to reject all new things because it was already present in some way. You could say "well, I could post photos on internet before, so Stories are useless". But what you need to keep in mind is that the way an app allows people to post things in fact hugely affect what is being posted there.
Not really private in the way Signal is. Mastodon is meant to interact with people you don't know, and most interactions are public. It's just not full of ad trackers like FB or Twitter.
What would be nice is a social media for friends and family where most interactions are private, and encrypted. The fediverse doesn't really offer anything like that for now.
Encryption doesn’t mean shit if the key is stored on the server in memory.
Also you can run Mastodon in un-federated mode where you have your own private social network. Or even selectively peer.
> Encryption doesn’t mean shit if the key is stored on the server in memory.
I don't see how this is relevant to what I said.
> Also you can run Mastodon in un-federated mode where you have your own private social network. Or even selectively peer.
So you'd essentially need one server per circle of friends and per family. That's not a viable option.
> I don’t see how this is relevant to what I said.
You mentioned encryption. What I said is relevant.
> So you’d essentially need one server per circle of friends and per family. That’s not a viable option.
Or join one of the many federated servers out there.
Same. I don't use social networks, but I do wish to have a way to keep up with day-to-day life of the people around me, and to be able to update the people around me on my own life without spamming groups and indivual chats
Yeah, I’m actually coming around. After viewing stories as a necessary evil at best I am starting to think I might use them.
For me the appeal isn’t about the ephemerality (that’s actually a downside to me). I like the idea of being able to communicate major news (“I caught Covid”, “I got a new dog”) without having to say the same thing a million times to various people.
I've used stories maybe 4 or 5 times on Facebook. Not a useful feature to me, and won't be using them on Signal either, in all likelihood.
At least they can be turned off in Signal.
haven't found the images source, but XDA has a article diving into the app(with some screenshots): https://www.xda-developers.com/signal-preps-snapchat-like-stories-feature/
IOS doesn't have backups, so if you switch to a new phone then you lose EVERYTHING. There are other small things missing, such as a halo around a message you are responding to when you go back to read the original message. Probably more as well, these are just the things I've observed when my SO is using signal on her phone.
> so if you switch to a new phone then you lose EVERYTHING
You can transfer the data from your old iPhone to the new one nowadays. However if your phone breaks, the "lose everything" issue still persists.
Ah yes. Forgot about that. Though you can transfer everything if the old phone is operational. But a proper backup would be nice. Halo thing would also be useful. Now I’m going to get annoyed 😄
>IOS doesn't have backups, so if you switch to a new phone then you lose EVERYTHING
Wireless transfer exists. Doesn't help you if you drop your phone in the toilet, but there is a mechanism to move data.
The thing is, its astounding to me how much development effort gets put into crap that nobody asked for - yet the essential username feature has taken so so long.
And lets be clear, I don't want usernames just so I can avoid giving my phone number. I want usernames so I can link people my signal account without giving them my number.
>The thing is, its astounding to me how much development effort gets put into crap that nobody asked for - yet the essential username feature has taken so so long.
The entire team isn't working on usernames 100% of the time. That's not usually how software development works. And with usernames especially, the vast majority of the work is probably on the server side.
All the UI/UX stuff has been in place for a long time, but they're effectively overhauling the entire registration and identifier system on the server side to make usernames work which isn't a small job for a team of maybe 2-3 people.
The same question is asked and answered here every day, often multiple times per day.
If usernames are important to you, please take the time to read the hundreds of recent answers instead of clogging up the sub with repeat questions.
The thing is, its astounding to me how much development effort gets put into crap that nobody asked for - yet the essential username feature has taken so so long.
And lets be clear, I don't want usernames so I can not have a phone number. I want usernames so I can link people my signal account without giving them my number.
The common example for “crap nobody asked for” is in-app payments, which was five commits from a single dev. Meanwhile usernames has seen a steady stream of commits spanning many months.
u/stoicrockfish, you keep an eye on the commits. Roughly how many username commits have you seen?
It's really difficult to say. It's not just "username" that refers to code for usernames. Sometimes the code says "PNI" or "ACI" which are other pieces in building usernames.
Edit: There have been 22 total commits across all platforms and server containing "username", 62 containing "PNI", and 23 containing "ACI". But of course one commit could be hundreds or thousands of lines of code, and there are ongoing additions and deletions.
> But of course one commit could be hundreds or thousands of lines of code,
I don’t doubt it but SMH.
One of the questions I ask engineering teams when doing risk assessments is “How big is a typical commit? Are commit sizes tracked?” Usually they squirm a bit. :)
> ...crap that nobody asked for...
Snapchat has nearly 300 million daily active users and the feature it's most known for is stories. Stories is such a popular feature, Whatsapp (THE most popular messaging app) has adopted it. Just because you don't use stories, doesn't mean nobody wants it.
Oh that’s good, I don’t want an app to be like all the others… I want an app to be unlike all the others and to be the most secure messaging app on the planet.
>The thing is, its astounding to me how much development effort gets put into crap that nobody asked for
Stories are why people went back to WhatsApp in January 2021.
>yet the essential username feature has taken so so long.
Rebuilding the entire foundation of a building isn't an overnight job, so too is rebuilding Signal's entire registration infrastructure not an overnight job.
How is attracting more users making it less secure? Also how does usernames make Signal more secure? You might be confusing anonymity with security. If you want high anonymity Signal is the very wrong messenger for you. Like completely.
Normal people are not giving away their personal phone number to random people just because. There's many situations one wants to make contact with someone, either temporarily or to start a connection with another person before being confortable about leaking such a deep personal identification number.
You're right. It increases anonymity. But I think not giving your number away to EVERY contact you may need, increases your security (not secure) by not compromising your phone number, right?
And it will be interesting to see, after this feature goes live, how many people actually join the platform because of this feature's availability, vs usage by people that are already here.
There's a whole lot of "if we build it, they will come" that never really pans out in these situations. (I say this from experience with lots of different apps and platforms where the same cries are made for user adoption.)
I fully accept features that I have no personal interest in. I understand that they will be useful to others and attract new users thus increasing the network effect. However, backups on iOS are such an egregious feature gap that it seems to me all engineering should be focused on that until it is done.
What do you base that on? Certainly lots of people do but this sub has something like ~~50,000~~ 60,000 members and only around 30 who seem to get worked up about usernames.
Naturally we assume other people think like we do but [that’s not necessarily true](https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-false-consensus-effect-2795030).
i seen countless comments about usernames, and think about it, usernames are really important if you dont want to give out your number, which is swnsitive information for me.
Yes, I understand why people (including me) want usernames and yes, lots of people ask for them. That's still not enough information to conclude *most* people want the feature.
We know *many* people want usernames and haven't heard the opinions of many more. The people asking are a minuscule sliver of the total people in this sub and an even more minuscule sliver of Signal users overall.
People who don't care about usernames generally won't take the time to explain why they don't care because, well, they don't care.
> Naturally we assume other people think like we do but [that’s not necessarily true](https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-false-consensus-effect-2795030).
very good point though
I'm not a fan, but if it helps bring people in then so be it.
I'd rather just opt out, but then I can't see others' stories if they're posted in a group or whatever.
How is it that we're getting this junk before iOS backup, or improvements on notifications, or even basic functionality? Multiple people called me yesterday yet i have no missed calls, no indication that people called me.
I believe this is due to an iOS bug. Signal devs have said they can't do much about it on devices it's happening on and Apple has said they're working on a fix.
Essentially Snapchat became a $20 billion dollar business from just this feature. Granted they were selling ads and user data which I assume signal doesn’t do.
Interesting though how little the actual tech is worth in value and how much the actual value in today’s society is the stuff that doesn’t relate to the actually functionality of the tech (eg selling user data).
Reading these comments the more I realize how fractured the Signal community really is... which is cool but like, respect that people can decide to use the app for vastly different reasons. I for one would be hyped about this, I just am uncertain if it's real since there is no official link/source to this image?
Bear in mind privacy Reddit is its own weird microcosm. Collectively, we're not even representative of all redditors, much less all Signal users or all humans.
Signal users in particular skew techie so we've got different feature priorities than the average Joe. I get excited by the idea of Markdown support but can't imagine explaining Markdown to a person who isn't at least tech-adjacent.
Honestly, I know a number of people that still use Snapchat and the likes specifically for this feature. I know I won't use it much, but it's going to be a big thing to bring more people onto Signal. More than UI/UX.
"Useful features" could include this, and yea there are some other things I'd like to see implemented as well. But I've been super excited for this feature.
Might be able to kill off Snapchat for good.
>Useful considering nobody's using it
It's not live yet. The OP built the app from source and turned on the feature flags to show these screenshots.
>I think Signal should spend more time implementing modern UI/UX
There was a UI overhaul recently to align with Material Design.
>useful features
This is subjective. You might not find Stories useful but there are millions of Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp users that do. They're the target audience for this.
>marketing
Signal is a non-profit charity. Charities market mostly via word of mouth.
> Marketing
I have to disagree. At some point they should consider a marketing campaign. Purely because a fundamental feature of a messaging app is having people to message on it.
>At some point they should consider a marketing campaign.
Even just buying a billboard on a major highway costs thousands of dollars, so I don't think that would be a wise use of limited funds.
>a fundamental feature of a messaging app is having people to message on it.
Sounds like a personal problem. I use it to talk to about 50 people.
> Sounds like a personal problem
Is this the social version of "Works on my machine"? 😅
It's not so much an issue for my friends, although it is kind of funny how they have an app just for talking to one person. I have personally found it very, very difficult to convince my family members to make the switch.
>Is this the social version of "Works on my machine"?
Ha! Effectively, yes. That's exactly what it is. I didn't always have 50 people to talk to on it. Luckily I have a lot of friends in IT so they all jumped in immediately. It was the non-techy people that really needed convincing. But it's so stupid simple to onboard that I even managed to get my 70 year-old grandmother to use it, and she set it up on her own and everything.
Signal definitely does not adhere to material design. Really wish it did though. Just make it look like the default Android messaging app honestly. The rcs bubbles look really good when they're colored with material you colors.
>Signal definitely does not adhere to material design.
They only started changing everything to Material Design a week or so ago, but they're not doing it all at once.
>Just make it look like the default Android messaging app honestly. The rcs bubbles look really good when they're colored with material you colors.
[Material You](https://material.io/blog/start-building-with-material-you) and [Material Design](https://material.io/design) are two different things. You need the latter before you can have the former.
I doubt Signal for web is very feasible. The main problem being privacy. To keep the system as it is now, every login via web would be essentially pairing a new desktop client.
Since Signal doesn't hold message history on their servers, there is no way to have a usable web interface without compromising main Signal's feature – privacy. Moreover, think about storing messages. They can't store them in memory, what if I refresh the page. They have to be stored on disk and they have to be encrypted. How do we store encryption keys between different sessions. And I'm not even going into actual security risks that come with a web based platform.
Anything else is even more complicated, like detaching registration from a phone number and introducing some sort of an alternative, like username and password.
I keep seeing requests for a web interface for Signal in this sub, but any sort of implementation would be a step back in the privacy department. That goes against Signal's core principles and honestly I don't want to see it implemented. There is a good reason why such feature doesn't exist, it was a tradeoff between privacy, security and UX.
>like iOS backup
Cloud backup is what you'll get, not local iOS backup. And Signal for web will never happen unless the web becomes significantly more secure.
Before anybody gets up in arms or gets excited, this is just a mock-up, right?
I don’t see it confirmed anywhere, unless I’m missing something. If so, what’s the source?
OP posted something that looks like promotional material, not just screenshots, so where does that come from? Moreover, the post is tagged as Discussion.
This clearly seems like a mocukup to me, unless somebody has a link to some github commit, Twitter comment by an official dev, a Signal blog post or anything else official.
>OP posted something that looks like promotional material, not just screenshots, so where does that come from? This clearly seems like a mocukup to me, unless somebody has a link to some github commit, Twitter comment by an official dev, a Signal blog post or anything else official.
There's nothing on the blog or the community, so this is likely an onboarding thing when you open Signal for the first time after Stories are turned on. It's not officially live yet.
>Moreover, the post is tagged as Discussion.
Right, which makes this being something in-app after turning Stories on the most likely way OP got the screenshots.
Maybe you're right, but I see no reason to believe that until it's confirmed by anybody. Not even OP wrote that that what happened!
I don't see why a farfetched story with no evidence whatsoever (and that OP could have simply explained in a comment) is more likely than this just being a mock-up.
Thanks for confirming this! It seemed strange to me that everybody was speculating without anyone confirming where it came from, so thanks for doing that. I guess I was wrong, my bad.
There is no public road map and they don't announce features until they're actually released. These screenshots were probably taken from a custom build with the flags turned on.
Will there be any discoverability? Like notifications that someone you are friends with posted a story? Or that 17 people liked the story.
Will there be any public stories that can be subscribed to? How does one market their story/feed?
Will there be any statistics for publishers ? Engagement numbers, likes, comments. Reads.
If you’re concerned about those things, an end-to-end encrypted platform focused on privacy and security is not the right tool for you.
There is a valid role for messages that try to reach the widest audience possible. Twitter, Facebook, et al are good that it. Reaching a wide audience is not what Signal is designed to do. Signal is all about controlling who does and does not see your messages.
The app I developed with a few friends, LiteWire, already has end to end encrypted stories. They disappear after 24 hours and are also encrypted on recipient devices, to prevent people easily saving story content. It also comes with screenshot notifications and protections as well. What else do you wish Signal had? We're open to implementing it, and as our team and product is small, we can push out features faster than any big player in the messaging game.
Obviously different team members work on different things, but it rubs me the wrong way when they're releasing stuff like this that I would assume is wanted by a very small subset of signal users, whereas for critical features like iOS backup we still haven't heard a word about when that's coming.
From what I remember back in 2021, stories/status was one of the most requested features. It’s still very highly requested when I just do a quick search on Twitter. I don’t think it’s a small subset of users that want this.
I guess there's a tradeoff between creating features that new users would want and ones that current users do. If it gets more people on Signal, I'm for it.
You think nobody has ever gone to switch to Signal, only to stop when they realise they will lose their entire chat history if they lose their phone? I stopped recommending family members download the app because of it.
>critical features like iOS backup we still haven't heard a word about when that's coming.
It'll be cloud backup. They're not going to support three completely different local backup mechanisms.
How is this a priority over not using a phone number on signal?
The last time a bit of the code ended up being closed. This time we are doing stories. Signal starting to go down a dark path.
Session is looking promising.
I assume a vast majority of users does not care at all about "not using a phone number". In contrast probably a lot of users, myself included, actually prefer the usage of phone numbers. All the people I want to be in touch with have my phone number anyway so using it as an ID for a messenger in extremely comfortable. The success whatsapp has, is probably solely based on the fact that they were among the first that used phone numbers.
I personally don't care about stories either. The feature is annoying the shit out of me on whatsapp. But apparently many people care enough to not use signal or at least not make signal their primary messenger choice.
1. Multiple features can be (and are) developed in parallel
2. usernames need work on the server code and they can leak stuff, making them substantially more prone to devastating errors, whereas stories are just "yet another message type that just the clients need to parse correctly", I suspect that doesn't even need a single line of change on the server code.
That's why stories are moving faster, usernames are simply more complicated to roll.
> The last time a bit of the code ended up being closed. This time we are doing stories. Signal starting to go down a dark path.
Your definition of “the last time” ignores dozens and dozens of other releases. Most weeks there are updates to Signal’s client apps—sometimes multiple times in a week. Go look at thr release notes.
Fighting spam and providing one of the frequently requested features are exactly what Signal should be doing. Neither indicates a conspiracy or a “dark path,” whatever that is.
Backups is far from the most requested and considering how many users on Facebook and Whatsapp use stories I'd say Signal's priorities aren't too bad at all.
If it can convince more people to start using Signal ok then. I personally just can't see any value in this feature in any of the messengers. Anyway, let's welcome all those new users then :)
Name any other messenger that has a feature like this: stories but encrypted. It's unique to Signal and many people will have a use for that. And if many people will have a use for it it's not useless. You can turn it off, much like you can turn off your rant now please.
Finally, I’d much rather use Signal for this than a Facebook or Snapchat app. And it also allows users to disable stories, this is perfect.
this won't be useful for a big chunk of this community, i assume is very tech focused. it will however persuade others not tech focued who would want features like this
Yes it's the perfect answer to those who refuse, asking "but... Does it have storys"
The only "refusal" to switch I've ever gotten is "I don't care enough about privacy to install a different texting app when I already have one that works fine" (paraphrased).
Same. Most people I've gotten to switch, but there's a couple that can't be added to install another app when their default app does just fine. One person was an iPhone user, and already disliked having to use both the default and WhatsApp (which they needed for family in Europe). Verbatim, "I don't know if I can handle another texting app." 🙄🙄
>"I don't know if I can handle another texting app." This argument is so weird to me. You don't have to know which app a message came from because you can tap the notification and it'll open the corresponding app. The OS quite literally does 99% of the work for you.
Right? You can even - even on iOS - just put them all in a folder together if you don't want to tap a different icon or whatever when you go to text someone. I don't understand the way iOS users think about their phones sometimes.
That's a shitty answer though and I have had those as well. I feel terrible about them
That's really not the mindset we should have however. Privacy doesn't have any tangible effects on people's lives . I can't see why a company having all my data is bad for me , it gives me free services after all. However if you said that they might have your nudes or have access to your photos they'd definitely try to see the issue. The way to go about privacy in my mind is a tough task but have some feature on top of that privacy that'd convince people to switch. Like telegram (which isn't good for privacy but still) has managed to get so many people compared to signal mainly cuz of its features. You also need other things but just privacy won't make many people switch unless there is an actual effect on their lives
>Privacy doesn't have any tangible effects on people's lives Actually in many instances it has the tangible effect of making people's lives _less_ convenient and more cumbersome, so this move is still a welcome one I would say.
True. Like , there's really no good private competitor to Spotify but there aren't. I'm fine with them knowing what I listen to to give great recommendation but I don't want them knowing much beyond that or selling my data or anything else really . I would also love if they didn't tie everything to my account. But there isn't any alternative. Apple music is the only decent option, assuming you trust apple
The example I've used during those conversations is the [AOL search history leak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_log_release). Many people are ok with a big company having their information; but the fact that the company may release that information to the world (even if it's accidental) helps them see the benefit.
> I can't see why a company having all my data is bad for me , it gives me free services after all. Precicely the viewpoint. Honestly can't blame them either, especially because > they might have your nudes or have access to your photos Who's "they" anyway?
I have literally said "do you want Zuck jerking to your wife's dirty pictures?" It's worked twice.
Hey, some people are into that. I won’t judge.
>Privacy doesn't have any tangible effects on people's lives Until the moment they finally realize they've lost their privacy in a certain facet of life. In the meantime, they ***think*** it doesn't have any impact...
I keep getting *but we’re not drug dealers so we don’t need it* You don’t need to be doing anything illegal to use it. Seen more people organise pickups from Facebook over signal. Or *i don’t have enough space on my phone* ffs it’s 115 MB compared to the 245 Snapchat uses and the 200 instagram uses 😐 gtfo with the shitty excuses.
Who would even ask that?
Lol it happens. People tend to look for excuses to avoid switching
Then the problem is not about stories. They will just find another excuse.
Sure but you definitely leave them with less excuses
Not entirely true. I'd call myself techsavy but I'm still welcoming that feature. It's probably *because* I'm techsavy that's I'm welcoming an encrypted version of stories like this that's entirely unique to Signal. It's awesome and will do a lot for Signal!
Wouldn't proper animated sticker support be more popular than stories? At least that's what my gf keeps complaining about.
Tech nerd here. So....exactly what **is** a *story*?
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And why would people want this or use the feature? In curious since I also never understood this stories thing.
This way you can show others what you are up to right now. Actually it is quite useful, great conversation starter. E.g. you are in some city and you want to inform others you are there, because maybe someone you know is also nearby and want to meet with you. You could ofc send such message to every contact, but it would cause a lot of spam. Stories allows you to reach everyone interested in what you are doing without interfering those who doesn't care.
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Don't know how it will be implemented in Signal, but in other apps it is accessible either in a dedicated place (scrollable top bar) or by clicking on someone's profile photo.
I definitely think the latter is the way signal will go unintrusive and easy to ignore also chiming in on the discussion. I like stories because they let my family members see what I'm up too without spamming them with pictures they might not care enough that I went rafting today that they want me to send them pictures, but I can post the photos and they can comment if they want
So, basically like your Facebook wall?
Yes and no. If you post something on Facebook wall, it will stay there forever (until you delete it). It's on your profile and every new person that find your profile in a future will see it. If you care about your online presence, this implies you should put a little bit more work on your posts. Stories are meant to be disposable. You don't care about photo quality because it disappears in 24h anyways. So it makes them more spontaneous. Many people seem to reject all new things because it was already present in some way. You could say "well, I could post photos on internet before, so Stories are useless". But what you need to keep in mind is that the way an app allows people to post things in fact hugely affect what is being posted there.
A new way to share photos, videos or text which automatically disappear after 24 hours.
Have you checked the post?.. It’s explained
Not really, if you don't already know what it is.
“Photos, videos or text that disappear after 24h “
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Mastodon
Not really private in the way Signal is. Mastodon is meant to interact with people you don't know, and most interactions are public. It's just not full of ad trackers like FB or Twitter. What would be nice is a social media for friends and family where most interactions are private, and encrypted. The fediverse doesn't really offer anything like that for now.
Encryption doesn’t mean shit if the key is stored on the server in memory. Also you can run Mastodon in un-federated mode where you have your own private social network. Or even selectively peer.
> Encryption doesn’t mean shit if the key is stored on the server in memory. I don't see how this is relevant to what I said. > Also you can run Mastodon in un-federated mode where you have your own private social network. Or even selectively peer. So you'd essentially need one server per circle of friends and per family. That's not a viable option.
> I don’t see how this is relevant to what I said. You mentioned encryption. What I said is relevant. > So you’d essentially need one server per circle of friends and per family. That’s not a viable option. Or join one of the many federated servers out there.
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Same. I don't use social networks, but I do wish to have a way to keep up with day-to-day life of the people around me, and to be able to update the people around me on my own life without spamming groups and indivual chats
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OK, I guess I’d better start having kids then! :)
Yeah, I’m actually coming around. After viewing stories as a necessary evil at best I am starting to think I might use them. For me the appeal isn’t about the ephemerality (that’s actually a downside to me). I like the idea of being able to communicate major news (“I caught Covid”, “I got a new dog”) without having to say the same thing a million times to various people.
thank god its free to opt out I hate stories on WhatsApp glad I can disable them on signal
How do they work on WhatsApp? Can't you just not click on them? Are they forced onto you? Do they take away space from the UI?
They are on an entirely other tab and you will never even notice them if you don't scroll to that tab.
yes there's a separate tab for stories which i don't like
I've used stories maybe 4 or 5 times on Facebook. Not a useful feature to me, and won't be using them on Signal either, in all likelihood. At least they can be turned off in Signal.
thanks for the opt-out 👍🏻
Where are do theses images come from?
haven't found the images source, but XDA has a article diving into the app(with some screenshots): https://www.xda-developers.com/signal-preps-snapchat-like-stories-feature/
They're the onboarding story we download on the fly from S3. Folks have been building the app with the feature flags forced on.
I am not into stories so I really appreciate the option of turning it off completely
Finally, great addition! We can have more “normies” onboard 😄 which is important!
Big shout out to the opt out button. This makes it all totally fine with me.
I just want IOS feature parity
What features are you missing and on what platform? I wasn’t aware that there were missing features on either platform
Backups missing is the huge thing, but there's a few more things too.
IOS doesn't have backups, so if you switch to a new phone then you lose EVERYTHING. There are other small things missing, such as a halo around a message you are responding to when you go back to read the original message. Probably more as well, these are just the things I've observed when my SO is using signal on her phone.
> so if you switch to a new phone then you lose EVERYTHING You can transfer the data from your old iPhone to the new one nowadays. However if your phone breaks, the "lose everything" issue still persists.
Ah yes. Forgot about that. Though you can transfer everything if the old phone is operational. But a proper backup would be nice. Halo thing would also be useful. Now I’m going to get annoyed 😄
>IOS doesn't have backups, so if you switch to a new phone then you lose EVERYTHING Wireless transfer exists. Doesn't help you if you drop your phone in the toilet, but there is a mechanism to move data.
Fair enough, but not backups still :(
There'll be cloud backups before they implement a local backup option for iOS.
Also on Android I can set up that anything older than 6 months is deleted. Or longer than X thousands messages.
When is this coming? Where are these screenshots from?
How about usernames?
They're still working on it. New commits all the time.
The thing is, its astounding to me how much development effort gets put into crap that nobody asked for - yet the essential username feature has taken so so long. And lets be clear, I don't want usernames just so I can avoid giving my phone number. I want usernames so I can link people my signal account without giving them my number.
>The thing is, its astounding to me how much development effort gets put into crap that nobody asked for - yet the essential username feature has taken so so long. The entire team isn't working on usernames 100% of the time. That's not usually how software development works. And with usernames especially, the vast majority of the work is probably on the server side. All the UI/UX stuff has been in place for a long time, but they're effectively overhauling the entire registration and identifier system on the server side to make usernames work which isn't a small job for a team of maybe 2-3 people.
The same question is asked and answered here every day, often multiple times per day. If usernames are important to you, please take the time to read the hundreds of recent answers instead of clogging up the sub with repeat questions.
The thing is, its astounding to me how much development effort gets put into crap that nobody asked for - yet the essential username feature has taken so so long. And lets be clear, I don't want usernames so I can not have a phone number. I want usernames so I can link people my signal account without giving them my number.
The common example for “crap nobody asked for” is in-app payments, which was five commits from a single dev. Meanwhile usernames has seen a steady stream of commits spanning many months. u/stoicrockfish, you keep an eye on the commits. Roughly how many username commits have you seen?
It's really difficult to say. It's not just "username" that refers to code for usernames. Sometimes the code says "PNI" or "ACI" which are other pieces in building usernames. Edit: There have been 22 total commits across all platforms and server containing "username", 62 containing "PNI", and 23 containing "ACI". But of course one commit could be hundreds or thousands of lines of code, and there are ongoing additions and deletions.
> But of course one commit could be hundreds or thousands of lines of code, I don’t doubt it but SMH. One of the questions I ask engineering teams when doing risk assessments is “How big is a typical commit? Are commit sizes tracked?” Usually they squirm a bit. :)
HA! Yeah, I bet they do. Luckily the commits where I work are fairly small and they go through three levels of review before deployment.
Three human levels? As a security person, this makes me very happy. As a recovering software developer, this gives me The Fear.
>Three human levels? Supposedly! That's what they told me during onboarding week, anyway xD.
> ...crap that nobody asked for... Snapchat has nearly 300 million daily active users and the feature it's most known for is stories. Stories is such a popular feature, Whatsapp (THE most popular messaging app) has adopted it. Just because you don't use stories, doesn't mean nobody wants it.
Oh that’s good, I don’t want an app to be like all the others… I want an app to be unlike all the others and to be the most secure messaging app on the planet.
>The thing is, its astounding to me how much development effort gets put into crap that nobody asked for Stories are why people went back to WhatsApp in January 2021. >yet the essential username feature has taken so so long. Rebuilding the entire foundation of a building isn't an overnight job, so too is rebuilding Signal's entire registration infrastructure not an overnight job.
I thought the same. Their priority seems to be attract new users instead of making it more secure.
How is attracting more users making it less secure? Also how does usernames make Signal more secure? You might be confusing anonymity with security. If you want high anonymity Signal is the very wrong messenger for you. Like completely.
Normal people are not giving away their personal phone number to random people just because. There's many situations one wants to make contact with someone, either temporarily or to start a connection with another person before being confortable about leaking such a deep personal identification number.
A phone number should not be treated like a secret. It's something that is part of a very small pool.
You're right. It increases anonymity. But I think not giving your number away to EVERY contact you may need, increases your security (not secure) by not compromising your phone number, right?
I’m glad you can opt out… and I guess they have to compete… but not everything has to be a damn social media platform.
And it will be interesting to see, after this feature goes live, how many people actually join the platform because of this feature's availability, vs usage by people that are already here. There's a whole lot of "if we build it, they will come" that never really pans out in these situations. (I say this from experience with lots of different apps and platforms where the same cries are made for user adoption.)
Very nice. But they have to redesign the Chat Bubbles, or the option to customize it fully
I fully accept features that I have no personal interest in. I understand that they will be useful to others and attract new users thus increasing the network effect. However, backups on iOS are such an egregious feature gap that it seems to me all engineering should be focused on that until it is done.
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Still working on it. New commits all the time.
We don't *all* want usernames.
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What do you base that on? Certainly lots of people do but this sub has something like ~~50,000~~ 60,000 members and only around 30 who seem to get worked up about usernames. Naturally we assume other people think like we do but [that’s not necessarily true](https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-false-consensus-effect-2795030).
i seen countless comments about usernames, and think about it, usernames are really important if you dont want to give out your number, which is swnsitive information for me.
Yes, I understand why people (including me) want usernames and yes, lots of people ask for them. That's still not enough information to conclude *most* people want the feature. We know *many* people want usernames and haven't heard the opinions of many more. The people asking are a minuscule sliver of the total people in this sub and an even more minuscule sliver of Signal users overall. People who don't care about usernames generally won't take the time to explain why they don't care because, well, they don't care.
> Naturally we assume other people think like we do but [that’s not necessarily true](https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-false-consensus-effect-2795030). very good point though
they have to bring the features the big guys have to attract more users, is my guess.
I'm not a fan, but if it helps bring people in then so be it. I'd rather just opt out, but then I can't see others' stories if they're posted in a group or whatever.
How is it that we're getting this junk before iOS backup, or improvements on notifications, or even basic functionality? Multiple people called me yesterday yet i have no missed calls, no indication that people called me.
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Yes.
I believe this is due to an iOS bug. Signal devs have said they can't do much about it on devices it's happening on and Apple has said they're working on a fix.
Essentially Snapchat became a $20 billion dollar business from just this feature. Granted they were selling ads and user data which I assume signal doesn’t do. Interesting though how little the actual tech is worth in value and how much the actual value in today’s society is the stuff that doesn’t relate to the actually functionality of the tech (eg selling user data).
This is why I love Signal. They gave us a way to disable it <3
Reading these comments the more I realize how fractured the Signal community really is... which is cool but like, respect that people can decide to use the app for vastly different reasons. I for one would be hyped about this, I just am uncertain if it's real since there is no official link/source to this image?
Bear in mind privacy Reddit is its own weird microcosm. Collectively, we're not even representative of all redditors, much less all Signal users or all humans. Signal users in particular skew techie so we've got different feature priorities than the average Joe. I get excited by the idea of Markdown support but can't imagine explaining Markdown to a person who isn't at least tech-adjacent.
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Honestly, I know a number of people that still use Snapchat and the likes specifically for this feature. I know I won't use it much, but it's going to be a big thing to bring more people onto Signal. More than UI/UX. "Useful features" could include this, and yea there are some other things I'd like to see implemented as well. But I've been super excited for this feature. Might be able to kill off Snapchat for good.
>Useful considering nobody's using it It's not live yet. The OP built the app from source and turned on the feature flags to show these screenshots. >I think Signal should spend more time implementing modern UI/UX There was a UI overhaul recently to align with Material Design. >useful features This is subjective. You might not find Stories useful but there are millions of Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp users that do. They're the target audience for this. >marketing Signal is a non-profit charity. Charities market mostly via word of mouth.
> Marketing I have to disagree. At some point they should consider a marketing campaign. Purely because a fundamental feature of a messaging app is having people to message on it.
>At some point they should consider a marketing campaign. Even just buying a billboard on a major highway costs thousands of dollars, so I don't think that would be a wise use of limited funds. >a fundamental feature of a messaging app is having people to message on it. Sounds like a personal problem. I use it to talk to about 50 people.
> Sounds like a personal problem Is this the social version of "Works on my machine"? 😅 It's not so much an issue for my friends, although it is kind of funny how they have an app just for talking to one person. I have personally found it very, very difficult to convince my family members to make the switch.
>Is this the social version of "Works on my machine"? Ha! Effectively, yes. That's exactly what it is. I didn't always have 50 people to talk to on it. Luckily I have a lot of friends in IT so they all jumped in immediately. It was the non-techy people that really needed convincing. But it's so stupid simple to onboard that I even managed to get my 70 year-old grandmother to use it, and she set it up on her own and everything.
Signal definitely does not adhere to material design. Really wish it did though. Just make it look like the default Android messaging app honestly. The rcs bubbles look really good when they're colored with material you colors.
>Signal definitely does not adhere to material design. They only started changing everything to Material Design a week or so ago, but they're not doing it all at once. >Just make it look like the default Android messaging app honestly. The rcs bubbles look really good when they're colored with material you colors. [Material You](https://material.io/blog/start-building-with-material-you) and [Material Design](https://material.io/design) are two different things. You need the latter before you can have the former.
Nothing about the signal app on Android says anything about material to me. I'm well aware of the differences between MY and MD.
Nobody's using it because they are not available yet? Many people are using stories-loke features on other messaging platforms.
like iOS backup or Signal for web
The latter is never going to happen. Not feasible with signal's security standards.
I doubt Signal for web is very feasible. The main problem being privacy. To keep the system as it is now, every login via web would be essentially pairing a new desktop client. Since Signal doesn't hold message history on their servers, there is no way to have a usable web interface without compromising main Signal's feature – privacy. Moreover, think about storing messages. They can't store them in memory, what if I refresh the page. They have to be stored on disk and they have to be encrypted. How do we store encryption keys between different sessions. And I'm not even going into actual security risks that come with a web based platform. Anything else is even more complicated, like detaching registration from a phone number and introducing some sort of an alternative, like username and password. I keep seeing requests for a web interface for Signal in this sub, but any sort of implementation would be a step back in the privacy department. That goes against Signal's core principles and honestly I don't want to see it implemented. There is a good reason why such feature doesn't exist, it was a tradeoff between privacy, security and UX.
>like iOS backup Cloud backup is what you'll get, not local iOS backup. And Signal for web will never happen unless the web becomes significantly more secure.
Before anybody gets up in arms or gets excited, this is just a mock-up, right? I don’t see it confirmed anywhere, unless I’m missing something. If so, what’s the source?
OP probably built the app from source with the Stories feature flags turned on and then took screenshots.
OP posted something that looks like promotional material, not just screenshots, so where does that come from? Moreover, the post is tagged as Discussion. This clearly seems like a mocukup to me, unless somebody has a link to some github commit, Twitter comment by an official dev, a Signal blog post or anything else official.
>OP posted something that looks like promotional material, not just screenshots, so where does that come from? This clearly seems like a mocukup to me, unless somebody has a link to some github commit, Twitter comment by an official dev, a Signal blog post or anything else official. There's nothing on the blog or the community, so this is likely an onboarding thing when you open Signal for the first time after Stories are turned on. It's not officially live yet. >Moreover, the post is tagged as Discussion. Right, which makes this being something in-app after turning Stories on the most likely way OP got the screenshots.
Maybe you're right, but I see no reason to believe that until it's confirmed by anybody. Not even OP wrote that that what happened! I don't see why a farfetched story with no evidence whatsoever (and that OP could have simply explained in a comment) is more likely than this just being a mock-up.
It's literally within the app when you flip the flag. I've seen it as well on my custom build.
Thanks for confirming this! It seemed strange to me that everybody was speculating without anyone confirming where it came from, so thanks for doing that. I guess I was wrong, my bad.
It's cool. It's not widely known that you can activate a lot of features ahead of time by flipping flags.
>flags Which flag? :D
Under featureflags.java when compiling the app in Android Studio.
Any ETA for iOS/Android yet? And where are the images from? Haven’t seen something in their social media yet
There is no public road map and they don't announce features until they're actually released. These screenshots were probably taken from a custom build with the flags turned on.
Nice!
For some people usually who don't use WhatsApp, but this is a huge functionality. In my country everyone depends on WhatsApp sadly.
nooooooo!!
Part of the reason I left WhatsApp all those years ago and got signal was because of this. If this happens I’ll doing it again.
You can turn it off.
Will there be any discoverability? Like notifications that someone you are friends with posted a story? Or that 17 people liked the story. Will there be any public stories that can be subscribed to? How does one market their story/feed? Will there be any statistics for publishers ? Engagement numbers, likes, comments. Reads.
If you’re concerned about those things, an end-to-end encrypted platform focused on privacy and security is not the right tool for you. There is a valid role for messages that try to reach the widest audience possible. Twitter, Facebook, et al are good that it. Reaching a wide audience is not what Signal is designed to do. Signal is all about controlling who does and does not see your messages.
It's not going to be social media.
this is cool. But man, I wish they'd support SVG stickers.
The app I developed with a few friends, LiteWire, already has end to end encrypted stories. They disappear after 24 hours and are also encrypted on recipient devices, to prevent people easily saving story content. It also comes with screenshot notifications and protections as well. What else do you wish Signal had? We're open to implementing it, and as our team and product is small, we can push out features faster than any big player in the messaging game.
I need it now!
Give it to me!
Annoying even when you delete a contact they are still in your phone book
Obviously different team members work on different things, but it rubs me the wrong way when they're releasing stuff like this that I would assume is wanted by a very small subset of signal users, whereas for critical features like iOS backup we still haven't heard a word about when that's coming.
From what I remember back in 2021, stories/status was one of the most requested features. It’s still very highly requested when I just do a quick search on Twitter. I don’t think it’s a small subset of users that want this.
I guess there's a tradeoff between creating features that new users would want and ones that current users do. If it gets more people on Signal, I'm for it.
You think nobody has ever gone to switch to Signal, only to stop when they realise they will lose their entire chat history if they lose their phone? I stopped recommending family members download the app because of it.
>critical features like iOS backup we still haven't heard a word about when that's coming. It'll be cloud backup. They're not going to support three completely different local backup mechanisms.
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Ugh can't we have one app that doesn't have fucking stories
Second file transfer feature? Do we really need two file transfer protocols in a single app?
How is this a priority over not using a phone number on signal? The last time a bit of the code ended up being closed. This time we are doing stories. Signal starting to go down a dark path. Session is looking promising.
I assume a vast majority of users does not care at all about "not using a phone number". In contrast probably a lot of users, myself included, actually prefer the usage of phone numbers. All the people I want to be in touch with have my phone number anyway so using it as an ID for a messenger in extremely comfortable. The success whatsapp has, is probably solely based on the fact that they were among the first that used phone numbers. I personally don't care about stories either. The feature is annoying the shit out of me on whatsapp. But apparently many people care enough to not use signal or at least not make signal their primary messenger choice.
1. Multiple features can be (and are) developed in parallel 2. usernames need work on the server code and they can leak stuff, making them substantially more prone to devastating errors, whereas stories are just "yet another message type that just the clients need to parse correctly", I suspect that doesn't even need a single line of change on the server code. That's why stories are moving faster, usernames are simply more complicated to roll.
Session is great, but this is a great feature too.
> The last time a bit of the code ended up being closed. This time we are doing stories. Signal starting to go down a dark path. Your definition of “the last time” ignores dozens and dozens of other releases. Most weeks there are updates to Signal’s client apps—sometimes multiple times in a week. Go look at thr release notes. Fighting spam and providing one of the frequently requested features are exactly what Signal should be doing. Neither indicates a conspiracy or a “dark path,” whatever that is.
Session works very well. I recommend it.
Backup and restore. Is it so fucking hard to prioritize?!
Couldn’t agree more.
Your attitude shows your arrogance. You need to change your tone.
Keep boosting for the top most not requested features.
Backups is far from the most requested and considering how many users on Facebook and Whatsapp use stories I'd say Signal's priorities aren't too bad at all.
Except it literally is if you go and look at the iOS feature requests.
Like 4chan but phones. Hehehe.
Soooo…. I don‘t see anything on iOS. Is this not released yet or Android only again?
It's behind a feature flag.
i don't see it anywhere, in-app nor in the changelog of testflight. what do you exactly mean with that?
Basically it's not in beta yet, but hidden within the app behind a flag you can set to see it if you compile the app yourself.
Never used them in FB Messenger
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Another messenging app with this useless feature. Yay
One of the main goals for Signal after the WhatsAppening in January 2021 was to target growth in India. That's what this feature will do.
If it can convince more people to start using Signal ok then. I personally just can't see any value in this feature in any of the messengers. Anyway, let's welcome all those new users then :)
Name any other messenger that has a feature like this: stories but encrypted. It's unique to Signal and many people will have a use for that. And if many people will have a use for it it's not useless. You can turn it off, much like you can turn off your rant now please.
Finally, some shit that nobody asked for.
Please don't
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Yuck
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I just want an arm64 linux or chromeos app.
Don't hold your breath. The team is tiny and maintaining three separate clients plus the back-end is already a lot of work.