[chupchap]

Biggest UX challenge with Signal for a normal person is the backup and recovery step. Whatsapp has made the process so seamless and Signal by design just cannot do it.

[jayelbe]

It's actually pretty straightforward to do backup and recover with Signal:

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...

[j7ake]

It's straightforward, but relative to whatsapp it is a huge hassle.

Imagine you lost/broken phone and bought a replacement. Whatsapp would be able to restore all your history while in Signal you are out of luck.

[Y-bar]

Apple support has occasionally asked me to reset my phone due to some iCloud issue. How do I back up my data and restore it after that without buying a second iOS iPhone?

[chupchap]

Yes I have done it, but my wife saw me do it and said there is no way she would go through all those steps.

[askvictor]

Agree, but then I think about how often I actually look back at my message history, and it's extremely rare (essentially never further back than a week). Not sure if I'm an outlier or not, and it's strange in that I'll regularly need to find emails from years back.

[eecc]

Well, seamless... on iOS they just lean on iCloud and dump/backup everything with no way of historicizing. It’s easy only until you’ve hit the iCloud free tier limit

[Y-bar]

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...

> How do I enable a backup? Can I use an iCloud backup?

>

> - Storing messages outside of your active Signal device is not supported.

> - Messages are only stored locally.

> - An iTunes or iCloud backup does not contain any of your Signal message history.

[eecc]

Uh, I thought it was obvious I was referring to to WhatsApp. Have you ever used it?

[Y-bar]

I used to quite a lot, but not very often these days.

[eecc]

I’m surprised by your answer. You’re literally reacting but ignoring the rhetorical aspects of my question and its implications. I guess it’s a way to drop the discussion

[Y-bar]

Would a simple "Yes" been a better answer to you? I felt like that would have been to short and wanted to add a little bit more context.