this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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Signal will finally let you transfer your encrypted chat history to new linked devices (mas.to)
submitted 3 days ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
106 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Signal has announced new functionality in its upcoming beta releases, allowing users to transfer messages and media when linking their primary Signal device to a new desktop or iPad. This feature offers the choice to carry over chats and the last 45 days of media, or to start fresh with only new messages.

The transfer process is end-to-end encrypted, ensuring privacy. It involves creating a compressed, encrypted archive of your Signal data, which is then sent to the new device via Signal's servers. Despite handling the transfer, the servers cannot access the message content due to the encryption.

With the introduction of a cross-platform archive format, Signal is also exploring additional tools for message transfer to new devices or restoration in case of device loss or damage. Users can begin testing this feature soon, with a wider rollout expected in the coming weeks.

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[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Why not use SimpleX then? You mention it but provide no real reason to use Signal over SimpleX

[–] Supernova1051@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

Privacy and security is all about threat modeling. Signal meets 100% of the security needs of everyone I communicate with in my region of the world. There's no need (especially now that you can hide phone numbers) for the added security benefits of SimpleX.

Additionally, my experience in using SimpleX over the last year+ is that message delivery is not reliable yet. This has forced me and the few people I've been testing it with to fall back to Signal multiple times. Because of these reliability issues and lacking UX, I don't feel comfortable pushing it on others, knowing the tolerance level is low for message delivery failures and UX that isn't yet up to par with other messaging apps.

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I use Simplex and overall happy with it, but since it is so new, would rather not go all-in. It is VC-backed so might eventually enshittify to make a profit.

[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I thought it was open source? Presumably a FOSS project can't go too bad.

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 8 points 3 days ago

Yeah, it absolutely is. But just being FOSS does not guarantee that its development would be forked in a sufficient way should something bad happen. Especially since they use Haskell, and I heard that it is not very common thus decreasing the survival chances. Sure hope it is cool enough to still warrant a fork, though.