[Pamar]

I just managed to convince a very small (4 not including me) group to move our whatsapp channel to Signal.

So far complaints have been:

- Lack of support for markdown (as in bold, italic etc.)

- Poor support on windows desktop (on this I cannot be more specific because I use signal ftom my iPhone exclusively)

[cassianoleal]

> - Lack of support for markdown (as in bold, italic etc.)

Interesting. I hadn't noticed the lack of it but I will eventually. To be fair, markdown is supposed to be readable and meaningful in plain text, so even if the symbols are displayed without formatting it's still useful.

> - Poor support on windows desktop

I have not used the Windows app, but the macOS app is infinitely better than WhatsApp's shoddy WebUI.

[StavrosK]

Not even full markdown, just bold, italic and strike through. I just had a friend move to Signal and that's exactly what he complained about too.

The kicker is that Signal does support that stuff if you paste them, and shows it properly, it just doesn't have buttons to let you use the styles when writing.

[yen223]

At least there's a macOS app. The craziest thing about WhatsApp is that they still don't have a native iPad app!

[tyfon]

A native app for windows and linux would be nice, but the electron app that is currently used doesn't have any major flaws except the usual electron memory and performance problems.

It does perform a lot of disk IO on startup so if you store it on a rust platter it can take a _long_ time to start though.

[levosmetalo]

Windows support is actually great. You can use it without draining your phone battery and mobile data. Besides, you can make an actual audio and video call directly from the application, without touching the phone.

[szszrk]

I find desktop app no worse than whatsapp. Killer feature here is that desktop app after connection does not need a phone/mobile device to be constantly present online.

[icelancer]

The Windows Signal client is way better than WhatsApp ridiculous thing where you have to be around the computer with your phone.

[sangli]

You don't have to be around computer with your phone, just connected to internet. I opened whatsapp webui on my Linux computer (via vnc) in the USA while sitting in Germany on my phone.

[mattowen_uk]

The Signal Windows Desktop app is unusable if you don't keep it running all the time.

During busy work periods, I'd close WhatsApp Desktop to help me focus, re-opening it when I'm done, and jumping back into the group conversations.

However on Signal, the app spends AGES downloading (and decrypting?) each message it's missed when you re-open it, and whats worse, is that you can't even use the app while it's doing it. Totally destroys any ad-hoc use of it.

As a primarily desktop based chat user, I found this issue to be a deal breaker, so back to WhatsApp I go.

[smartbit]

IMHO the desktop client of Signal is far superior to Whatsapp: the Desktop & iPad client of Signal allows Video & Voice (group) calls. Whatapp desktop client allows neither, only Chat, neither does it have a client for the iPad.