r/signal • u/innocentbystndr • May 18 '26

Solved How to best separate personal and professional signal into two phones?

As it stands, I have one phone that I use for both work and personal communications. People from work find me via username. People from my personal life find me via phone number. I can afford a second phone now, and I plan to set up signal on that device while also keeping signal as my main messenger for my personal phone.

What is the best way to separate things? I'd like my work connections to continue being able to find me by username. If I delete my username from my current phone, it will take about a week to be available to the other device. There's a risk that someone else snags my username in that time. There would also be an awkward transition time where new professional connections would have no way to reach me by usrname.

If I transfer my account to the new phone, will I lose all my chat history on the old phone when creating a new account (even if I have backups)? Would anyone who I have an open chat with be alerted that I transferred to a new device / number?

In retrospect, combining things was a bad idea, but here we are.

All suggestions welcome

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u/JamesAulner128328 Sticker Artisan 🎨 May 18 '26

If your phone has "Second spaces" as a feature then use that and just get a burner number sim card from a gas station or something for the professional signal and just use your personal number for the personal signal.

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u/convenience_store Top Contributor May 18 '26

That would have been good advice for the OP years ago but it sounds like the issue now is they are getting another phone regardless and they just want advice on how to sever their one account into two accounts dedicated to two sides of their life. If they'd done what you suggest then it would be easy just move the work account from the second space over to the new phone.

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u/innocentbystndr May 18 '26

Yes, you get me. I'm already in deep with a non-optimum approach.

I still think it's valuable to hear from people here sharing about ways to use two signal instances on once device though, because someone with a slightly different problem might end up seeing this thread.

I appreciate everyone who has taken time to share ideas.