Signal was a brilliant app. It can send messages with rich media, host group chats, and even do voice and video calls, all with the peace of mind that comes from a proper secure messaging app. The best part was that you could still send messages to people who don't use Signal. Signal was the messaging app everyone wants - all the benefits of iMessage, without being siloed in one particular ecosystem.
Sometime leading up to October of 2022, the folks at the Signal foundation lost the plot. Signal has since dropped support for SMS, and is inexplicably adding "stories" to their personal messaging app. I despise this.
Instead of just complaining about it, I decided to do something about it. Here is a link to a version of the Signal Android app that still supports SMS, and doesn't have stories. There also isn't a stupid, nagging banner telling you to update. Right now, it's just Signal 5.38 with a couple lines commented out, but I plan to integrate any upstream security/UX improvements in the near future. For now, you'll have to build/install it yourself, but I will eventually put an APK out there for people to download. Enjoy!
I really did loath the removal of SMS. It went like this for me: I would set up non-techie family with signal and that would be SMS and secure messaging for them. Then Signal removed SMS, so I had to explain to them that I had actually set them up with something "unstable" and needed to change their apps around. As a consequence, they're more hesitant to try things I suggest and I can't blame them. As for the actual messaging, inevitably they'll forget to juggle apps and just default to SMS and there's only so much I can go against the stream here.
This is cool, but I think being the default in the mainline app is critical. Also, iirc signal doesn't like modified apps, so this might be on shaky ground.
The key here is that this isn't really a "third party app," per se. It's all their code. All I did was replace this:
return getBoolean(CLIENT_DEPRECATED, false);
return false;
> Sometime leading up to October of 2022, the folks at the Signal foundation lost the plot. Signal has since dropped support for SMS, and is inexplicably adding "stories" to their personal messaging app. I despise this.
On iPhone Signal never support SMS in the first place. Just sounds like they're smartly keeping it consistent that all messages are secure rather than intermixing non-secure and secure messaging, which was a dumb idea from the get go.
Couldn't disagree more. Having a singular app handle all messaging was brilliant and a key feature to bring people over.
Apple disallowing competition isn't a good reason to remove something useful for Android users.
> Couldn't disagree more. Having a singular app handle all messaging was brilliant and a key feature to bring people over.
> Apple disallowing competition isn't a good reason to remove something useful for Android users.
Nice in theory, but RCS breaks everything here.
You send someone at SMS in Signal, they reply but their client "upgrades" it to RCS. Signal never receives the reply (because the RCS android API is private), and now everyone blames Signal for "dropping messages".
But why does putting all your messaging in a single app help bring people over? People have always juggled multiple messaging clients since forever ago.
I personally use 4 different ones at the moment (Signal, Messages(SMS+iMessage), LINE, and Snapchat) and lots of other people I know also use WhatsApp, Messenger, or one of the various Chinese messaging apps. I don't think I know anyone who uses just a single messaging app.
"dumb idea from the get go."
You could potentially send an unencrypted msg if you fat fingered the send button into a long press, a swipe, and then another tap.
Otherwise, people messaging you would just find themselves silently upgraded to encrypted messenging, because it was the default already on both phones. It was a boon for security overall, but allowed a.. Not a pitfall so much as a pit climb that could be a security let down.
The silent upgrade of everyday messages broadened signal from that platform people use to talk about black market stuff to that platform people use to text.
I guess politicians and their staffers are just doing black market dealings if your reductionistic point of view holds out to be true [1]
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/02/24/new-whats...
Hyperbole is useful for illustrating a point, please take people in good faith.
The point was that the signal users are being fragmented, divided amongst those who do and don't mind inconvenience to hide their messaging. At the time they are pushing the social media features like stories, groups, and payments, it doesn't make sense to tamp down on android's network effect.
Politicians don't have to worry about their staffers uninstalling the app but forgetting to tell the campaign.
Silent upgrade and so silent downgrade instead of fail to send? Risky.
It's not silent, the UI clearly indicated when you were sending messages encrypted or unencrypted.
That doesn't sound like a silent upgrade but instead a silent downgrade to cleartext, a big security no-no that should never be performed.
The real problem is that Google and carriers are moving Android to RCS+SMS. SMS is awaiting execution.
Good luck killing SMS when the RCS APIs are for Google Messages (and rebranded Android OEM messages apps) only. The few paid RCS messaging APIs that exist are priced like caviar compared to SMS.
Yeah. The reality is that RCS is happening and leaves Signal in the same position they are on iOS where SMS is only supported/allowed via Apple's app and they can't touch.
SMS-only users will be left in the cold. It used to be that if you use SMS you were a pariah on iOS with low quality MMS etc. Pretty soon SMS users will be a pariah on both iOS and Android. Not to mention how things change if/when the EU forces Apple to support RCS.
Furthermore RCS is adding encryption. So Signal users who communicate via SMS are missing out on that possibility to improve their use of encrypted communication with users who don't use Signal.
The narrative of the Signal+SMS silent upgrade is also falling apart. As RCS support continues to roll out, you are actively downgrading a user's experience if you install Signal as their SMS client.
Frankly I don't see these facts support SMS in Signal being worth any developer effort. And if literally anything in the SMS stack results is a security breach of a Signal user, Signal gets all the egg on their face. It just does not make sense for SMS to exist in Signal.
Right, just like MMS killed SMS. Good luck trying to kill simple plain text message with shaky Google RCS support, which ain't some international open standard.
I agree. It was risky for users, who associate Signal with 'secure'.
Settings > Stories > Turn off stories. Done.
As per SMS, I am fine using a separate app, and I understand that it may be harder than it seems to properly support SMS. I know some people really want SMS in Signal though.
How long until you have to turn the story mode off on every update? Microsoft does it.
The IOS version of signal has no option to permanently turn off notifications. So you say no, and the app reminds you asking if you wish to turn on notifications every x app launches.
Why is this so difficult to implement? If your asking me, then reminding me that I'll be asked again. Surely it's just a matter of adding a UI toggle with switch case of "if user says no, stay no".
Thats my only gripe with signal.
I'm glad you mention a specific example. I was going to say that all the nagging notifications can be turned off and they don't come back. And that I'm not worried about that regardless of whether Microsoft does it.
But I'm running Signal on Android and it seems like that makes a difference.
Did you have a look at the codebase? Is it on purpose or is it a bug?
On purpose.
A message box after selecting "No" as an option displays with a message of "We will remind you later".
> Settings > Stories > Turn off stories. Done.
I wouldn't know. I turned off updates for Signal before they removed SMS support, and then when my version of the app "expired" (i.e. bricked itself by checking a build timestamp) I made this.
I hadn't bothered to look if stories could be turned off. Thanks!
If you have another moment for tech support, how to turn off picture metadata stripping? When I send a picture I know who I send it to and I want the GPS in there.
I don't know that this is possible. That's a security feature, and I can understand that they may not want to compromise (too much) on security.
But yeah it means that sometimes it's limiting features. Everything is a tradeoff!
An advantage I found of signal having SMS support just a few days ago was when I met a new person and went to text them to confirm the numbers. I texted him, he texted back, and as it happened we both have Signal, so it was encrypted. If/when Signal removes SMS support, this sort of automatic, frictionless, natural discovery will not happen. Less people will use encrypted messaging because it relies on more people caring about encrypted messaging. Not going to happen, unfortunately, because nobody wants to be the weirdo who asks to use a special app.
Unlike the normies, who ask for each other's Insta? Don't get me wrong, losing SMS support is the wrong direction, imo, but its just a different platform, no need to get so judgemental about who uses it.
Casual discovery is so much easier than having a conversation about what platform you would prefer to use followed by trading unique ids from said platform.
I have had the same experience on multiple occasions, and it's one of the reasons I made this fork.
Edit: looks like Signal isn't disabling SMS support yet. I guess I can put off uninstalling it for a few months longer.
I'm confused.
I have Signal installed and set as my default SMS app and it still works perfectly fine. Is this something specific to my device or is there something keeping the "disabled" feature alive? Am I going to get an update that will break my SMS messages?
My app reports version 6.8.3.
SMS still works currently. But on my version 6.9.1 it shows a nag message at the bottom that SMS support is going to go away at some point. With an offer to export the SMS to the phone database.
It is also not possible to enable SMS support again from the Signal options itself. Though it can still be set from the Android settings.
I presume it will actually stop being supported completely in a future update. I wouldn't think the feature requires any support from the Signal servers, so I reckon you would be able to use it for as long as the app still works.
In the end I accepted this turn to the worse and exported my SMS history and switched to Silence. Turns out I don't actually use SMS much. Mostly just for delivery notifications.
> Signal Android (but less sucky)
Interesting how upset people got about all this. I just use the Android SMS app just like I would if I wasn't on Signal at all and I'll ignore stories because they're not important to me.
A lot of people, me included, are upset because now all of the SMS message history within Signal is locked inside Signal, and it doesn't seem to transfer to the default app.
> A lot of people, me included, are upset because now all of the SMS message history within Signal is locked inside Signal, and it doesn't seem to transfer to the default app.
I seem to remember there was a button to export SMS history when disabling Signal as the default SMS app?
That's right.
That sucks because it did export messages for me. Or maybe they explained how to do it but it couldn't have been much work because otherwise I wouldn't have done it.
Do the upstream Signal servers allow third party clients now, or does this need separate infrastructure for the signal part (to be compliant and/or avoid an account ban)?
I don't know if they are technically allowed but https://molly.im exists.
I couldn't agree more, and I love to see this kind of a response to their change in focus.
Here's another fork doing something similar: https://github.com/johanw666/Signal-Android/releases
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