Signal - Private Messenger

I switched to Signal after getting hacked at Hangouts that a friend talked me into . I’m so glad I did my research because that was a year ago and I have not been disappointed. Chatting on the phone is so clear, FaceTime is so clear even overseas, I like the quick voice messages you can leave. It’s easy to send 5 photos at a time to share. For the person upset about not saving history, etc ... go back to messenger or hangouts. Different people want different things, and I for one prefer not to have anyone spying or breaking into my conversations. It’s irrelevant that what you are talking about isn’t top secret ... it’s personal and not anyone’s business except whom I’m talking to. As for stickers ... geez, I’m not juvenile. I dint need silly stickers and gifs. Once again, go use another app that provides that stuff. Personally I love the simple cleanliness of the app. If you want to save a photo sent you or a piece if conversation containing something you wish to keep, screen shot it. Crop the picture for for photos and stick the info you saved to a file folder or notes. I’d give it ten stars if I could. My only wish is that it only gets better and not worse, like so many apps do after they have been out there for so long. I hope the developers maintain their integrity and keep this app private 😊

This is simply the best privacy app with everything neatly bundled into it. It has a nice authentication feature, sms & mms messaging & disappearing messages with people [to keep them clean if you’d like], calls, and keeps it all private, app switch privacy [keeping the screen blank for privacy while switching apps so wandering eyes cannot see the screen], and many more features packed into this powerhouse. To anyone experiencing any issues with calls, make sure your notifications are on and properly set with the app, and look into the settings in the app itself and it easily shows how to have your calls show up with the name [if you would like to] or just a call without a name. The settings are a breeze and make it very easy to understand. Very rarely you’ll have to re-register for push notifications, but that’s also very easily accomplished. If I could rate higher than 5 stars I would. 10 stars out of 5 stars is more like it...

I love signal, and I try to get everyone I know to use it. There’s a lot of friction for that, unfortunately, but such is life. Thanks to the developers for making a secure mode of communication. I’m giving this four stars for two reasons: 1) signal calls are much less reliable than regular Wi-Fi calls from other apps. I’m not really sure why this is, but it seems like when I call others sometimes the phone just doesn’t ring. I’ve called my wife’s phone while it was in the same room to test this, but I’ve seen it happen with others numbers too (I.e. it’s not just her phone from what I can tell). Dead reliable calling would really help me recruit more friends to this app. 2) please please please make it so the app can go into wide mode when the phone is turned on its side. For those of us with large hands and normal size iPhones typing on the portrait width keyboard is somewhere between annoying and painful. One must crook one’s thumb at pretty sharp angles to hit all the keys especially those on the palm adjacent side of the keyboard. I have no idea why this app doesn’t have this feature when most apps seem to. Honestly if the App Store didn’t allow typing in this fashion I may not have written this review! Thanks again devs for a safe channel of communication.

Love the app, and until this last version I would say that all it really needed was a way to assign any custom iPhone alert to an incoming message. The current version gives options, but doesn’t allow you to use any alerts on the phone. That, however, is a customization, so no big deal, but this last version broke the attachments. Now when I attach anything from the Signal side or to Signal through the phone side, it doesn’t immediately show up. Sometimes you can exit the chat itself and go back in, and sometimes if you shut down the app and reopen they will show, but most of the time I have to wait for a reply for it to show, so I never know if it was sent. I’ve also noticed that it sometimes puts my messages in the wrong order. For instance, I will see the reply above the original message. That, too, eventually fixes itself but it’s very annoying and has only started happening since the newest version was installed.

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I was a very happy customer of this app since I found out about it but the insane race to the lowest common denominator, adding “stickers” to an app whose main purpose is secure and reliable communications have broken the application. Messages do not send, or send after hours, and in one epic case over a day later. No other application has an issue connecting to the internet or sending messages, including WhatsApp and FB Messenger. The “sending” icon gets stuck and nothing happens. If you go to the settings, you can see the “network status” switching between “connected” “connecting” and “offline” And before anyone blames my settings, I made sure the app has all the recommended rights, low battery mode is disabled and no app or connection restrictions are set on the app. This happens on both WiFi and LTE, so it is not tied to a bad WiFi or data connection, especially since I have tested it on multiple WiFi networks and not just my home one. So, tl; dr, add stickers, make communications impossible. Great move , I hope people enjoy their little cats and stuff while I look for a proper secure communications app...