[mderazon]

I actually going in the other direction with Signal

I turned on timer (1 week) for all of my conversation.

Nothing stays more than a week and I do not keep any backup.

It's not for security or privacy reasons. I feel like I don't need a full history of all my conversations with everyone from the beginning of time.

This fits more to the real life model of having a conversation with someone. I don't record my conversations with people so why do I need to do it in chat apps?

My Whatsapp is the same. Don't need all the massive amount of chat history...

[JoshTriplett]

Interesting that that model works for you, but that doesn't mean it works for everyone.

Persistent history that lasts many times longer than the lifetime of any one device is a required feature to fully replace chat apps that have such history.

[benhurmarcel]

Whatsapp doesn't have that feature when you switch between iOS and Android however.

[godelski]

I just limit the message number.

BUT I've heard a lot of people request the feature of porting messages. I didn't realize people care about this till they started telling me (I have convinced a good number of my friends to switch to Signal). So I'd say that because the market is asking for it, implement it. (I do notice that it is only iPhone users asking me about how they can do this. Might be selection bias)

BTW, you can do this! [0] I'd think the easiest thing to do (I don't know iOS or Android at all) would be to create a backup to iCloud or Drive that will hold an encrypted file. Then a function for the reverse. Since I don't do anything remotely near mobile, is this not fairly easy to implement? Encrypted backup is one of the top requested features [1] and seems one of the easiest to implement.

[0] https://github.com/signalapp

[1] https://community.signalusers.org/c/feature-requests?order=v...

Side note: the only features I want are

- Not being tied to a phone number, or a way to add a user without a phone number

- domain fronting (... thanks Amazon... )[2]

I think both are in the spirit of what Signal is trying to do and would specifically help protestors in authoritative countries. That they can decrypt their phones and not reveal others in the group chats. But I understand that these requests are much more difficult than asking for encrypted backup.

[2] https://signal.org/blog/looking-back-on-the-front/

[m-p-3]

I'm with you on that. Maybe it's just me, but I believe that a communication system (be Signal or email) is not designed for long term storage, it's just not efficient to keep structured data and not made for that purpose.

If a fragment of a conversation is useful, I'd store it somewhere else safe just in case (Password Manager, as a secure note).

[wpietri]

I think maybe we have different definitions of "useful".

I'm pretty stubborn about preserving my chat history; it goes back across several phone upgrades. When my dad died earlier this year, I was glad of it. I get to scroll back and see what we talked about.

If my choice was between secure comms and keeping history, I'd take keeping history. Surely many people are in the same boat. So if Signal wants to be truly ubiquitous (which increases security for all users), they really have to solve common user needs.

[brnt]

I did the same. Only one person voiced their annoyance due to messages disappearing. I never used chat history as a data store, I move appointments or things I need to know into my agenda/wiki, but it seems some use chat history+search for that.

Since I really dislike using chatlogs, and rather not keep any (and ever since the 90ies, I never have), I really like the 1 week timer on Signal.

[nothrabannosir]

I've been putting the same 1 week timer on all chats; it's a breath of fresh air. Very happy that these chats are ephemeral. It feels far more natural.

(Not a "it works for me it should work for you", just wanted to share an anecdote :) )