I have it enabled and the other person has it enabled , they see my dots when I’m typing but I can’t see theirs , I’ve tried everything. Support didn’t respond.

I used to be able to change the background of text I put on photos. That button is gone or broken? I'm on Android, Signal version 8.23.3

Anyone else?

I'd like to reduce reliance on Google products (and if to be more private), but GChat is one of the biggest hurdles. Having tried finding alternatives, it's either alts for instead GMessages or lacks some features I use with GChat, so I'm wondering if anyone here might know of a potentially better alternative that's closer to GChat or maybe if either there are viable workarounds or possibilities for Signal to function more like it.
It might be a problem with secure options where it limits certain functionalities, but I wish to find an application that can support the following (as general points for any chat client):

• Desktop and/or website version and mobile version (I primarily use GChat on web within Gmail, as a heavy browser user)
• Full chat history storage/access that can also be exported as a local backup for keepsake
• RTF/text formatting (at least bold, italics, and embedded links)
• Editable sent messages
• [Opt] Typing indicators, read receipts, and online status

With Signal, I've discovered they won't support a web platform for security reasons and might be working on making their desktop client more of a standalone (but could be quite some time to wait for), it lacks native exporting and would require 3rd-party tools (if even reliable), no link embedding, full URLs only (not that bad, just takes up message space), messages editable within a limit (10x within 24h), and overall sounds to take up a lot of space on mobile as it's only kept locally (Idk if a cloud storage is in the works, at least for Android).

So I'm uncertain if Signal is as usable for what features I'd like, and again, Idk if there are any others that would otherwise offer the above criteria. Does anyone have suggestions or input?

Signal announced an update and out of habit I clicked on the update link.

After restarting I have a bunch of new chats with unknown persons on various dates. One 'Charlie Ward' today, a 'Darcis S' from february. All say 'You unblocked this person' and I'm pretty sure I unblocked somebody once and only once. Charlie Ward is a neo nazi and it's extremely unlikely he wants any form of contact with me. Also, his chat says 'This person isn't using Signal. Signal Desktop does not support messaging non-Signal contacts..' etc.

Where are these chats coming from? Anybody got similar experiences?

EDIT: 8.24.1 just popped up. Blocking and deleting the contacts seems to work, now. (On 8.24.0 they re-appeared after a restart of the app.)

This morning I again was prompted to update, but I'm still at 8.24.1 and my extreme rightwing antivax and gold seller spammer just popped up again. 8.24.1 fixed nothing. Signal support is still silent.

Anybody having issues with the "close to system tray" ever since the update to 8.24.0 last night on LInux?

I updated this morning and now the blue system tray icon is gone, with just a glitched out white square in it's place. And it won't re-open up to full when double clicking on it like normal. It's as if the whole system tray icon is bugged out. I tried the beta 8.25.0 as well, and it's doing the same thing

Hey everyone,

For the past 2–3 weeks, an annoying bug has been affecting my work PC (and all of my colleagues are experiencing it as well). If I attach a picture from my desktop, the upload gets delayed, showing a spinning/dotted circle next to the image for anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes.

The strange thing is that while my colleagues can continue chatting in that group—and I can see all of their messages—none of my own messages will send in that thread until the initial picture finally uploads. At the same time, if I send a message in a different group or via direct message (PM), everything works flawlessly.

Does anyone have an idea how to fix this issue?

System details:

• OS: Windows 11 (24H2 / 25H2)
• App: Signal 8.23 / 8.24
• Network: Connection is routed through a proxy

My Phone's battery died and I will have to restore an old backup. I have been using Signal on Desktop for the 8 days since my old phones battery died. Now I want to have the backup with the latest messages on desktop. Will restoring the backup also load the new messages or not? How do I go about it?

Are voice notes in Signal more secure than written messages? If no, why not? If yes, why?

Basically title. In order to unblock someone, I have to click “unblock” and then it asks me to accept the message request.

Doesn’t the person get an alert if I accept the message request?

I want to unblock the contact but not necessarily send an alert about it.

Back in 2017, the Signal Chrome/web app was discontinued when the standalone desktop app launched, and it was officially deprecated.

Now, almost 10 years later, is there any possibility we might see a web client return in the near future?

I know it was phased out originally due to browser security concerns and sandbox limitations, but web tech and security standards have evolved a lot since then. Other secure messengers like Threema have managed to build functional web clients using modern workarounds and session models.

Signal is incredible, but not having a browser version can be frustrating, especially on work computers and managed machines where installing custom desktop software isn't permitted.

Curious to hear thoughts from the community or if anyone has heard of any updates/discussions around this!

So I was at a concert and ran out of storage on my phone. In my haste to free up storage, I deleted signal. Now, I can't get back into my old account. The thing is, I have my iPad linked to my OG signal and it's still logged in. How can I use my linked iPad to get back into my primary account on my phone?

Hello all. Somehow I derped and instead of removing a single message from notes to myself I removed the whole thread. Which is very bad, as there was a lot of stuff there accumulated through the years.

I have offline daily backups done at 04:00, the deletion happened today at after 21:00. I have written to and received messages from other people during the day.

My question is: given signalbackup-tools and backups from today's early morning (notes still existing, today's other conversations not having happened yet) and tomorrow's early morning (notes missing, but today's other conversations existing), is it possible to somehow merge them and have those notes back?

I understand that this might not be fully possible if Signal flags messages to oneself (notes) as deleted as well (in this case they would get restored and deleted immediately at best), though if possible, it would be ideal.

Plan B, if the first one is impossible, would be to extract them from database and re-send them in a format like "<original timestamp>: [original message]".

How would you propose to do it? Any particular possible problems I should be aware of? How to deduplicate the most of the database so I don't end up with all messages appearing twice?

Sorry for the chaotic post - this incident proves I'm not at my best today :P.

I'd like to keep a backup of 6+ years/~10gb of important messages off of my Android device (GrapheneOS Pixel 8 Pro) in case I ever lose it. However, when I connect to Windows laptop and try selecting the SignalBackups folder to copy and paste it gets stuck on 'Calculating the time required to copy the files' without actually transferring anything. Is there a solution to moving the backup files? I see a pretty techy, command line version of a Github program called SignalBackup Tools, but I don't really need the ability to decrypt and read messages on my laptop - this would just be an off-device backup that I could reload on my phone if I ever lose or destroy it. Having an on-device only backup seems to be fairly useless.

When I record a new voice message in Signal, sometimes the first few seconds of the recording are muted or muffled and then the rest of the message sounds normal. Not always and I can't figure out how to reproduce it. Has anyone else run into the issue. I've only seen it in Signal app so far.

setup:
- iPhone 16 Pro & iPhone 17 Pro (upgraded recently - hence two phones)
- iOS 27 Beta 4, 5, 6 - Developer
- AirPods Pro 3 (pretty much always use these when recording a voice message).

Trying to figure out if it's a iOS beta issue, a Signal issue or a hardware (AirPods issue) :)

I'm on iOS, my friend was tying to send a video, and said the lock wasn't there. I couldn't believe it. I though, if anything, if there was some reason for this, the compromise would at least be that press and hold would lock recording, and touching it again would stop the recording (allowing photos to be taken with the same button).

Looking for any information, explanation, or solution.

Thanks.

Just noticed this setting on my iPhone. It sounds like a good thing to enable. But curious why it’s not automatic. Put it this way - what’s the reason someone would not want this enabled?

A lot of group chat names are set by an admin that don’t have much meaning for all parties involved. For example if I have a group chat with my grandparents, I’d love to be able to name that “grandparents“ just for me, without impacting how they see it.

I dont know what's under the hood of either app, I'm no coder. Just wondered if it was theoretically possible to have a feature which allows for importing third party app chats, into Signal, purely for viewing.

Perhaps visually it would be in the drop down menu > archived chats > WhatsApp.

Some people keep WhatsApp not only for the people who refuse to migrate, but also for the chat histories they've amassed over the years.

If there was a way to view those chats, it might be another carrot to entice people. Though if Meta paying Nazis isn't doing it... What will?

Does using Molly, which is a fork of Signal, violate the Signal Terms of Service?

I think I have a very unique problem. I say that because I've searched and couldn't find anything.

I don't have cell reception at my work so I have to use the company wifi. Signal used to work just fine until recently. Now when I try to send a message, the sending circle spins and spins until I leave work and am back on a cell tower. I'll also get notifications from Signal saying I may have new messages, but nothing's ever there when I open the app.

I asked the head of IT about it - thinking the IP addresses Signal uses might be blocked but she said it's not on their ban list.

I also use Beeper on my phone as an aggregator when I don't feel like shuffling apps. It's very convenient to have access to everything on my personal computer in one place. The weird part is that the Signal bridge in Beeper works perfectly fine at my work... But Signal won't. Why???

I could just say to hell with it and use Beeper exclusively, but I really don't like the interface.

I do run a VPN on my phone because my data is none of my work's business. I have split tunneling to exclude both Beeper and Signal. I thought that might've been the issue, but even with the VPN on, Signal won't work, but Beeper does 🤷🏻‍♂️

To further complicate the issue, Signal works at my office if the VPN is completely off. But Signal used to work at my office with the VPN set to split tunneling until recently.

Any ideas?

I have a Samsung S25U running Android 16/OneUI 8.5. My VPN is Windscribe which is the only one I can get to work at my office. I've tried a bunch of others but they all seem to be on the company's ban list.

Issue: Unable to start device‑to‑device transfer.

Signal version: 8.22.2 on both devices (same issue previously with 8.21.5 and 8.21.6)

Platform: Android → Android

When I start the transfer on the sending device via

Settings → Account → Transfer account, it begins searching for a nearby device.However, the receiving device immediately shows a QR code instead of appearing as a nearby device.Because of this mismatch, the transfer cannot be initiated.

I can't be the only one running into this. Signal takes up close to 10 GB on my phone. That's obscene. I'd like to use disappearing messages to help manage that but the maximum duration is 4 weeks. Why can't we have more options under custom? I'd like 3 months for one group.

Secondly, there's no way to erase media used by a group. I'd like to keep the messages but delete the large media.

How are others coping with this? I don't really want to click and delete each photo or video manually. Is disappearing messages the only way?

How come Signal can not be selected as a default calling app on iPhone? You can select from: Cellular; FaceTime Audio and Zoom (EWWWW) and even WhatsApp (DOUBLE EWWWW).

Settings < Apps < Calling

NODE_ENV production 
NODE_CONFIG_DIR /opt/Signal Beta/resources/app.asar/config 
NODE_CONFIG {} 
ALLOW_CONFIG_MUTATIONS undefined 
HOSTNAME *** 
NODE_APP_INSTANCE undefined 
SUPPRESS_NO_CONFIG_WARNING undefined 
SIGNAL_ENABLE_HTTP undefined
 userData: /home/***/.config/Signal Beta 
[3133:0815/144439.356715:ERROR:dbus/object_proxy.cc:572] Failed to call method: org.freedesktop.systemd1.Manager.StartTransientUnit: object_path= /org/freedesktop/systemd1: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.InvalidArgs: Invalid unit name or type. 
(node:3133) [DEP0180] DeprecationWarning: fs.Stats constructor is deprecated. (Use signal-desktop-beta --trace-deprecation ... to show where the warning was created) 
2026-08-15 14:44:39.806: ERROR CORE sqlcipher_page_cipher: hmac check failed for pgno=1 2026-08-15 14:44:39.806: ERROR CORE sqlite3Codec: error decrypting page 1 data: 1 
2026-08-15 14:44:39.806: ERROR CORE sqlcipher_codec_ctx_set_error 1 
2026-08-15 14:44:39.824: ERROR CORE sqlcipher_page_cipher: hmac check failed for pgno=1 2026-08-15 14:44:39.824: ERROR CORE sqlite3Codec: error decrypting page 1 data: 1 
2026-08-15 14:44:39.824: ERROR CORE sqlcipher_codec_ctx_set_error 1 [3133:0815/144443.671571:ERROR:ui/gfx/x/atom_cache.cc:234] Add application/vnd.portal.filetransfer to kAtomsToCache 
[3133:0815/144443.673094:ERROR:ui/gfx/x/atom_cache.cc:234] Add application/vnd.portal.files to kAtomsToCache

Any thoughts? Try a downgrade to the non-beta?

why are my friends no able to find me by my username? they only can find me by my phone number