One of the biggest issue is the video quality. It’s much inferior than the competition, mainly from WhatsApp.
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Signal Private Messenger Gains Chat Wallpapers, Animated Stickers, 'About' Profile Section, and More
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Matrix does this. Servers usually have multiple "bridges". For example WhatsApp, Signal, Slack, IRC have bridges.
Privacy vs. convenience. As old as walking over instead of just yelling.
I’ve started to dive - myself - into what p2p notifications would look like for a completely secure and server agnostic messaging service. But... it seems like you need to rely on a good server to Atleast authenticate and carry messages until a device comes back in range to serve them.
In Signal's Privacy Settings set "Always Relay Calls" to on - no appreciable slowdowns
Encrypted messaging app Signal has been updated with several new features that reflect its increase in popularity, including chat wallpapers, an "About" section in user profiles, and more.
In a change that should appeal to former WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger users, Signal now lets you set chat wallpapers for individual chats, or set a single default background for all chat threads.
Similarly, the app now offers support for animated stickers, while Signal users can create their own APNG animated sticker packs in Signal Desktop.
Elsewhere, expanded chat list previews display the sender's name in group chats, so it's easier to decide which threads to look at first.
In addition, the update includes a new setting to lower data usage for calls, and users can automatically pause attachment downloads while a call is in progress. The developers have also improved image compression and quality.
The update comes at just the right time for Signal. The privacy-focused chat app recently enjoyed a surge in account sign-ups after a bungled privacy policy update by rival service WhatsApp caused a user exodus from the Facebook-owned platform.
The app also got the thumbs up from prominent Signal users like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Edward Snowden, which only added to mainstream interest in the app.
The last major update came in December, when the app rolled out support for encrypted group video calls. Signal Private Messenger is a free download [Direct Link] for iPhone and iPad available on the App Store.
Article Link: Signal Private Messenger Gains Chat Wallpapers, Animated Stickers, 'About' Profile Section, and More
I don't really care about the wallpapers. But Signal has been pretty solid for me - and it has all the features I want in a chat app.
Someone said they wanted GIFs... I'm the opposite. Signal does handle them, but blessedly they don't have a one-button GIF feature. It used to be said that a picture was worth a thousand words; but animated GIFs are only worth about four or five at best (and those are usually printed right there on the stupid things - I guess they worry their audience isn't going to get the joke).
Someone said they wanted GIFs... I'm the opposite. Signal does handle them, but blessedly they don't have a one-button GIF feature. It used to be said that a picture was worth a thousand words; but animated GIFs are only worth about four or five at best (and those are usually printed right there on the stupid things - I guess they worry their audience isn't going to get the joke).
That‘s afaik on their todo list. They first wanted to get calls out via groups before they add the option to dynamically add participants to an ongoing call.
Good thing about Signal is that it has a proper Multi device support, and stand alone ipad app with calls and video built in (Unlike whatsapp web). With wallpapers, it now feels more customisable as well rather than a plain white or black background.
What version of Signal do you use? There absolutely are stickers and they‘re a gazillion times more comfortable to maintain than the WhatsApp equivalent...
I managed to bring my family over to Signal but there was some inconsistency with the notifications(like one out of 20 messages would arrive but not trigger a notification), so they moved back to Viber which is where most of the people are anyway. A couple of days after Musk's tweet Signal was #3-4 in the app store, now its back to #10.
I was thinking about this . . . I don't know how they'd do it on a wide-area scale. I'm also not a network, systems, or devops engineer, but I imagine some sort of hosted infrastructure would have to be put in place. One approach that could work (I'm spitballing, since I don't actually know how feasible this is) is something like how bitcoin works with some sort of decentralized system.
It is certainly possible on a nearby scale. Take Nintendo for example — you can play Mario Kart on the switch if both switch owners have the game and are close enough. I did this with my friend on a flight from Budapest. We were several rows apart and didn't have a network connection.
Apple has been working on a lot of nearby-focused tech. I wonder if they could utilize some of that to leverage nearby-messaging that doesn't rely on wifi or cellular. The use case is probably more niche than the benefits of P2P messaging, but I think enough people would find a benefit.
If only they could get iPad video chat working in landscape mode. But I guess it was more important to add the fluff features.
Thanks for the tip! didn't know the mobile app had gif feature hidden there ❤️ I've been mainly using the desktop version and it doesn't seem to have the same gif feature? Can only see Stickers and emoji
+ sign is for files
US citizens don't understand the pain, worldwide Whatsapp is the defacto standard for phone communication, FB bought it for like $19 6 years ago and I am sure they make money off it somehow. US citizens just use SMS and if they both have an iphone it auto becomes imessage.
We need to break the clutches of FB, FB and all privacy merchants.
We need to break the clutches of FB, FB and all privacy merchants.
I was going to sign up for Signal as well until it wanted my phone number. The username/password as you suggested would be a nice option.
Matrix is not p2p though, is it? It's federated.
As a long time IRC user I was interested in Matrix, but the last time I tried it (about a year ago) it was still very clunky and slow. Joining a channel would take about 5 minutes and give a cryptic error message... even though it seemingly succeeded. It was full of little "surprises" like that. Also the online status was not propagating to clients, which was a huge bummer.
Hopefully it got better.
I was surprised when I travelled the world for work. WhatsApp is used almost everywhere - especially in Germany (at least with the crowd I hung out with).
NOOOOOOO!!! Darn you - I was blissfully ignorant that it had this built in!
Stop telling people about it!! 😆
This is only an Apple walled garden problem. On Android you can install it from other sources.
There are other p2p options like Matrix, Threema, that you can deploy on your own server.
It goes both ways, I and many others are surprised there are people who use iMessage out there. The reason personally I don't like iMessage is that you don't know if the other has, you just send them SMS if he has iPhone it works if not its just SMS.
Oh there are stickers available in the version of Signal I use. I just think there should be an option to disable them (on any messaging system, including imessages). Maybe Im getting too old, I dont need to relay a message to family menbers in stickers.
They’re certainly not ‘in your face’, why can’t you just not use them?Oh there are stickers available in the version of Signal I use. I just think there should be an option to disable them (on any messaging system, including imessages). Maybe Im getting too old, I dont need to relay a message to family menbers in stickers.