[andrepd]

Honestly I'm pretty critical of the Signal app design: from the crypto nonsense, to the removal of chat bubble colors (used to be each person had a color, pretty useful in group chats), to the copious amounts of whitespace that have been linearly increasing for years, to the fact that the design has to change and break familiarity every 6 months or the devs have a stroke.

But I actually like this decision. It makes things less confusing and accidental use of unsecure SMS impossible. The downside is if you still use SMS you have to keep 2 apps, back them up separately, etc.

> "Why do I need 3 apps (Android Messages, Signal, Whatsapp)"

"You need Signal to talk to people on Signal, WhatsApp to talk to people on WhatsApp, and Messages to talk to people on SMS." Seems more straightforward than "use WhatsApp to talk to people on WhatsApp and Signal to talk to people on Signal or SMS; just pay attention to the color of the send button".

[stevemk14ebr]

This issue for myself and many others is it makes something that used to be transparent, entirely unsupported. The UX is unambiguously worse. I could trust signal to upgrade my texts for me when possible, or not when my contacts were SMS. I don't care about always being encrypted 100% of the time. Signal was that perfect tradeoff between privacy, and ease of use, which is exceptionally rare. Providing this tradeoff is what made them popular, them going against it is counterproductive and will hurt them badly. I know this because now I'm considering leaving myself.

[caf]

I know this because now I'm considering leaving myself.

I feel like I'm not leaving Signal; Signal is leaving me.