[jeltz]

Sounds pretty much like my experience with the official Signal app. It is a mess too and I only use Signal/Molly because I have friends who use it.

But sadly the competitors are as bad, just in different ways. Why has nobody yet managed to build a good IM client? It does not seem like we have come far from what we had back in the Pidgin days.

[miki123211]

Because everybody (except Telegram funnily enough) is prioritizing security over user convenience.

Most apps on the market are E2E by default these days, and that introduces a whole host of complications. It's the wrong tradeoff for 95+ percent of users. If you can only afford 1 device and only switch to a new one when the old device breaks, E2E is a disaster in the making. For the overwhelming majority of users, making sure that they have access to their messages when they switch devices is far more important than being protected from the NSA. This is something most signal advocates are completely unwilling to talk about.

[homebrewer]

Wire was able to implement a fully E2E-encrypted messenger with proper multi-device support almost a decade ago, long before it became mainstream. Fully FOSS too, including the server. For some reason it never became popular. They don't have proper desktop clients (just the usual Electron mess), but then, which one of them does except for Telegram?

https://github.com/wireapp/wire-server , etc.

[styanax]

My memory is really fuzzy, but I recall back when the new IM apps were all coming out and competing for the small share of people wanting to test them, either the Wire app or using the Wire service had a hard cost ($5 USD?) (no free-to-test tier, you had to pay to use). I believe history has shown a vast majority of folks will choose free (even with ads, sadly) over a hard cost for IM. Signal talked a better game and offered everything for free.

[almogo]

I moved all my friends to Wire about a decade ago. Pretty, but the actual user experience was awful. We moved to Telegram and since then to Signal.

I didn't actually know Wire was FOSS.

[miki123211]

How do they handle message recovery when all your devices have been lost (and possibly when you've forgotten your password)?

That's (almost) incompatible with E2E encryption. You could do it via "social proof" or server-side secure enclaves and pins, but that's about it.

[nullc]

Who cares? this stuff is all ephemeral messaging. People frequently don't have and can't find them if they do, even absent any security.

[GoblinSlayer]

Maybe in google profile backup, where all your data is stored.

[GoblinSlayer]

Why would they need history of their shitposts? It loses actuality in a day, maximum in a week.

[MrDarcy]

This is correct and applies to security in general. Security is one facet of reliability.

[dataangel]

I mean, E2E is the entire point of Signal. if you don't think E2E is important then Signal is the wrong app. Personally given the current political climate I think having the technical knowledge to understand what E2E is and not wanting E2E is bonkers. High chance of people getting killed or jailed in the US for mainstream political positions in the near future.

[e40]

I’ve used Signal across many devices for years with zero problems.

[princevegeta89]

Signal seems to work alright for me, although I felt the desktop app gets a bit annoying because of too many frequent updates happening to the app, which I believe is based on Electron.

But besides this, there is really a strong need for a web client, just like Telegram or WhatsApp. If only the protocol can be extended in such a way that it allows for integrating into a web app, that would be incredibly great.

[shmel]

Which is pretty odd as WhatsApp allegedly uses the very same E2E encryption and has no problem implementing a web client. I really don't see the point of Electron if it doesn't allow you to provide a web client.

[fn-mote]

> Which is pretty odd

I have always assumed no Signal web client was a choice made to improve security.

[teekert]

It’s easier to make cross platform?

[bjoli]

I have been particularly impressed with the device migration experience. I have an 18gb db, and even the time my device died I managed to get things over correctly.

[gojomo]

If the device with an 18GB message history was truly 'dead', how did you transfer the history over?

[codedokode]

Why do you need a message history? The only use I can think of, if someone uses it against you in court. I don't remember looking up anything in history.

[gojomo]

I look up old iMessages, emails, group chat comments, and so forth constantly, often finding valuable gems of wit, reference-material, recommendations, or media that I dimly remember from years or even decades ago.

Signal and other messaging apps offer a 'search' bar across all sessions & history, so I doubt I'm the only one.

It's hard for me to imagine being so present-focused such a history wouldn't be personally useful.

Or, so worried about "someone [using] it against [me] in court" that I'd need more than the occasional auto-expiration, and specifically my messenger "protecting" me with intermittently-enforced loss-of-histories (on just theft/loss/hard-failure of primary device).

[e40]

I have messages from a deceased friend. I find it comforting to read them from time to time.

[bjoli]

Because of family phonos shared between me an my siblings, and between me and my wife.

All our communication is over signal, so it is a nice record to have.

[Krasnol]

I've been using it since it was called TextSecure.

I had no issues at all since it's called Signal. I have no idea what people do with it to cause problems at all.

It would still be interesting to find out.

I've been on Android only btw.

[shmel]

I really hate that the desktop app unlinks after a relatively short period of time. I rarely use Signal, so few of my friends are there, so I have to relink the desktop app almost every time I open it. I wouldn't mind scanning a qr code every now and then, but then the history refuses to sync because security. So far I haven't find how to change it.

The Android app is stable enough, but the UX of having to look at the phone while typing a reply on a normal keyboard is annoying. This is why I prefer Telegram every time.

[wccrawford]

I've got Signal on 2 computers, 1 of which I only run it occasionally. I've never had to reconnect it.

I'm not sure what's going on for you, but it seems really abnormal.

[k1t]

It automatically unlinks the desktop app if you don't open it for 30 days.

There is now at least a reminder on the phone app that will prompt you a few days before one of your desktop apps is about to get unlinked.

[Krasnol]

I wouldn't call 30 days "a short period of time"...If I hadn't used it for 30days, I'd uninstall it.

[gojomo]

"I've been lucky not to have devices lost/stolen/bricked. Why can't other people just be lucky like me?"

[e40]

The comment I replied to was providing annecdata about a bad experience. I was doing the opposite, to balance.

Your portrayal of my comment is not even close.

[gojomo]

Anecdotes of occasional problems, even at a low or unquantified rate, are valid & useful evidence that something negative is happening.

Anecdotes that sometimes those problems don't occur are nearly worthless. Of course that's true - the original anecdotal complaint already implicitly relies on, & grants, the idea that there's some default, "hoped for" ideal from which their experience has fallen short.

To chime in, "never had your problems" thus adds no info. Yes, people lucky enough not to hit those Signal limits that cause others to lose data exist, of course. But how does that testimony help those with problems? Should their frustration be considered less important or credible, because of your luck?

The as-if portrayal is one way your anecdote will be perceived, even if that wasn't your intent.

[ForHackernews]

Very few of the protocols supported by Pidgin were encrypted, unless you used the OTR plugin. That makes it a lot easier to support things like chat history.

[compass_copium]

Shouldn't your client have no problem saving a chat history? It is, by definition, able to read every message you send and receive.

[jeltz]

I used the OTR plugin a lot.

[prmoustache]

conversations (xmpp) and deltachat work pretty well in my experience.

[nextos]

Dino (XMPP, https://dino.im) is a great desktop client to talk to other XMPP clients, in particular Conversations, due to its broad support of XEPs.

[fao_]

Conversations has an issue where the main tool for reading a backup on a computer (ceb2txt (so, say, I can properly and correctly archive a text dump archive of a person I loved who died)), will not work for me. I filed a support request and there's been no movement on it whatsoever and it genuinely seems like nobody gives a shit. Restoring a backup even with all the images and media files in the correct place with the correct filenames will then refuse to show any filenames.

This is par for the course with chat backups, though.

Messenger - Bad - No way to save chat responses of people you have talked to. This means you only ever have one side of a conversation, making it meaningless.

Twitter DMs - Bad - See Messenger.

Jami - Ehhhh - Saves a git local repository of messages. The only problem is message syncing is effing abysmal.

Dino (XMPP) - Bad - Does not allow backing anything up, this is "intentional". Depending on which protocol you use, as soon as you move to another device all the messages you _had_ are retroactively converted to Cannot Decrypt. They're my effing messages!

Discord - Good - Discord History Tracker (tedious to use but slurps everything up into a sqlite3 database that is itself, an official archival format)

WhatsApp - Good - Dumps a text record + files/images/etc. onto the phone's filesystem. This is reasonably easy to archive.

Signal - Mediocre - If you have an old Signal backup from 2018? That you could only transfer off your phone by deleting old messages? lmao you're effed. Load up a version from ten years ago, gradually update it and then maybe, MAYBE you can extract the sqlite3 archive? These days you have a .signalbackup or whatever which is an encrypted archive, and I assume that there's a tool to decrypt it, but uhhhhhh. Last I tried to use it it required way more RAM than I had accessible.

[vitorgrs]

What about Telegram?

[gardnr]

Telegram, which ostensibly claimed to provide e2e but really only did in very specific circumstances? My right wing uncle is still bitter about that. Then there's the rolling over the founder did after getting pulled up by Interpol.

I'm not sure why anyone would trust Telegram.

[ufmace]

Exactly what "rolling over" would that be?

Maybe you don't believe Durov's statement[0] about it. But is there any actual evidence anywhere that they've ever violated the secrecy of non-e2e private groups or messages for anyone? I've yet to find any.

[0] https://t.me/durov/342

[vitorgrs]

Oh, I agree. it's just, they mentioned things like Twitter DM, Messenger and forgot Telegram...

[dymk]

That wasn’t the original question though. Twitter and Messenger are also untrustworthy. Telegram’s message export is very good compared to all the other options.

[BSDobelix]

+1 for Deltachat

[stackghost]

Beeper is pretty good. I daily drive it on multiple protocols.

[geoah]

I love beeper and have been using it for a very long time at this point, but I wouldn’t go as far as calling it a good client.

Whatsapp mentions don’t work (just show the name of the mention to the other users), and polls or albums don’t work.

Messenger disconnects every couple of days at this point.

Pasting links won’t always expand.

Attachments are always hit or miss.

So many small other things. Still love it.

[boznz]

SMS works just fine for me, but international calling is a killer, it's 2025 you would think this would be free by now.

[krater23]

The deathblow for Signal was that I was in a group and some group messages just got lost for some members completely unnoticed. So you could never be sure if you missed something or someone. I'm using WhatsApp again, now since years and had never issues, it just works.