No. It doesn't.

If you're going to advocate for an open alternative, at least be intellectually honest about it's pros/cons. You might have gotten used to Signal, and be unfamiliar with Telegram (and sure, much of usability has an element of subjectivity to it), but... the above statement simply isn't true in the general sense.

Personally, I tend to try and advocate for Riot.im over Signal when trying to push friends to an alternative platform—it's preferable from an openness perspective for a lot of reasons. I am however well aware that Signal (along with most things) has a better user experience than Riot.im does currently.

Telegram and WhatsApp are quite close in usability (they've each copied quite a few UI features back and forth, so there's a lot of familiarity in switching). And unfortunately not many alternatives really come close to either of them.

- Doesn't go in to system tray (unless you fiddle with command line arguments).

- can't search messages

- overall unpolished (e.g. saving a file has no "show in folder" option afterwards)

I use Signal and Telegram both - it's clear to me that Telegram provides the better user experience. I like Signal from the privacy standpoint though.

If you're using Android then I think that Signal is kind of a no-brainer to use because it doubles as your SMS client, so if a contact is a Signal user you get the privacy you want, but if they aren't at least you can still text them.

This was really jarring for me the first time I used Signal Desktop on Windows. I clicked on the close button and then realized that the app had terminated instead of minimizing to the tray (as such apps would be expected by many users to behave).

Thanks, I didn't know about command line arguments for that. I'll check it out.

Than edit the target to add the argument:

C:\Users\[your_username]\AppData\Local\Programs\signal-desktop\Signal.exe --start-in-tray

This is huge to me. I spend a large portion of my day in front of computers, so messaging services that take the desktop seriously are much more likely to catch my attention.

It doesn't always deliver messages, and it more frequently doesn't deliver them in a timely fashion.

In my experience, Signal delays delivery of messages about 5% of the time -- which is actually huge and makes it unusable for reliable chats.

The story which made me never trust Signal again: I was out of town and trying to coordinate with a backup pet sitter, because my original pet sitter became unavailable. I sent them a message via Signal (their preferred chat), heard nothing for a day, and started frantically calling around to everyone I knew who had a key to my place to please take care of a pet.

Several days later, I got a reply from them..."Hey, I just got this. Did you need me to take care of your pet?"

Over the course of several months of regular chatting with my then-significant otter, I also noticed once or twice in every two week period we'd have a half-day delay on messages...just...silence from one of us or the other, followed by, "Where were you? I texted you hours ago." from one or the other of us.

I know not everyone has these problems with Signal, but I've also seen enough other people on here alone complain about this that I know it's not just my hardware or network setup (this was across both Android and IOS devices).

For that alone, I will try to deflect away from Signal for anyone who's got any other chat methods set up.

Telegram, on the other hand, has been absolutely reliable, both in regular and secure chats. Never a lost message, never a delayed message.

Same for Whatsapp.

Signal also has the worst UI of all of them, and it comes down to all the polish that free software almost always lacks. On Signal on Android, you can select different colored themes (I like night mode for everything); on IOS, you're stuck with white. The chat bubbles are very plain on Signal, on Telegram they're a little fancier. You can set a chat background on Telegram; Signal, it's a plain white chat. Telegram? You can add sticker packs and use stickers in chats. No stickers in Signal. Attaching photos is cruder in Signal. Group chats are weirder in Signal.

If the visual flair doesn't matter to you, then fine, I get it, you don't need to tell me it's not important -- it's important to me.

And one more thing that isn't really 100% Signal's fault but absolutely drove me mad when I used it on Android as a replacement to the default SMS app: there's no real way to know when someone sets up Signal and then uninstalls it, and Signal defaults to sending secure messages every time. So, there were a few people I'd text who, I'd send them a text (which Signal sent over its own network), hear nothing for a few hours, then remember that they were one of the people who had uninstalled Signal, and I'd resend the message via non-encrypted SMS and receive an instant reply.

No way to tell Signal, "never send to these people via Signal, only use SMS with these people," which adds a tremendous friction to a chat app that really shouldn't be there. Not 100% Signal's fault (those people arguably should be "deregistering" from Signal) but absolutely within their ability to build a fix for it.

> Same for Whatsapp.

what's disturbing to me (from a relatively naive perspective -- I'm familiar with terms like PSTN and MVNO and the general system, but I havn't worked in telecom): you've described what would be exactly how a nation state would kill a superior and more secure messaging app. Compel telcos to drop/delay GCM of websocket/GCM push notifications for a small minority of device IDs, so that the userbase rotted away...

There've been several state actors that have done this to both Telegram and Signal already -- both of these apps employ different ways of avoiding it but this is already one of the arms races in the world of secure chats.

FWIW, my problems with Signal losing/delaying messages are all US-based, which AFAIK has never been accused of doing any sort of state-level firewalling of secure chat apps.

And besides, if I were a state actor and I wanted to sink a program like Signal through such subversive means, I'd probably have someone start contributing to the project, and then start arguing in favor of bad UX choices; make it harder to use, not just unreliable, in favor of "security". Push it out of the realm of what a normal user could conceivably make use of.

That's the kind of long con I'd play -- play on techies' love of doing things on principle and for theoretical purposes, and general disinterest in UX.

Here's Signal:

https://imagebin.ca/v/4aAU1ai9CG8D

And Telegram:

https://imagebin.ca/v/4aAUJhRmj8Jx

Signal is white (and no night mode on IOS), the bubbles are undecorated rounded rectangles, there's no background and no option to set one, no stickers, no option to set disappearing messages on the fly, no indicator of when the person was last online. It looks plain.

Telegram has a night mode, options to set background colors, chat messages. It doesn't look plain.

As I've said, if you don't care whether something looks plain, then that is absolutely great and entirely up to you. Lots of people don't care about lots of things and there's really nothing wrong with that.

I like my apps to look nice (and I can, within broad strokes, define what "looks nice" is) and I know this isn't a unique position I occupy.

In Settings, there's a moon in the top right which toggles light/dark modes. This is v2.37.1.0 but the release notes list dark mode as appearing in v2.30.2 which is about 4 months ago.

And you said it perfectly -- it's easier on the eyes, and I don't think it's one single thing, but several little touches.

Reliability trumps security for near 100% of usecases.

As a side note: We switched form slack to teams which has features no end but chat is't reliable as well.

I'm using https://silence.im/ - A Signal fork - instead of Signal for this exact reason.

I agree with the SMS replacement for Android and uninstalling causing woes trying to send secure messages, have been bitten by that one on several occasions. Thankfully most people I talk to have multiple apps installed.

Also, apart from what I mentioned above, I've also found out that with Signal it's very hard to transfer your chat history to another phone. (involves manually copying over a backup, entering 30 char key). I can't in good conscience recommend an app like that as a replacement to anyone, so I guess my Signal experiment will be short-lived.

Obviously my experience probably doesn't reflect everyone's, so hopefully whatever stability issues others are experiencing can be resolved soon, but from my own perspective having it on-by-default would be pretty seamless at the moment.

So, it's getting close...

Open Whisper Systems is a company that uses "open-source" as a marketing term while bullying the people who choose to take advantage of it.

You can build your own client, but if you start to distribute it, they'll ban you from using their servers[1], with an explanation plain ridiculous for a company that took thousands of dollars from various open source foundations. The server is open source, but again, you have no guarantee that the official (and only) signal server is anything close to the software they published as open source.

Telegram at least publishes libraries that you can actually use with their official service [2]. You still have to „trust the company” to a certain degree: you'll never get proper security without something like Matrix or XMPP where you can be in control over both ends of the communication. Still, a company like OWS or Telegram can do more or less to put users more in control over their end: and I'd argue that OWS is doing way less for that than Telegram does.

[1] https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco... [2] https://github.com/tdlib/td

EDIT: removed "dishonest" – I wish I had strikethrough to use :)

The internet is full of half-baked "secure" and "private" chat clients and servers. Security is hard to get right. I'm guessing they don't want the reputation of Signal muddled up with some other random client. IIUC anyone can run their own network, and make it as open as they like, using their code, they just can't call it Signal. Much like how Firefox and RedHat use their trademarks.

For all we know, both the Signal network and its client are a half-baked "secure" and "private" chat, and the source code they publish is an elaborate decoy (though probably a subset of the real underlying code, for obvious reasons).

That's a valid question which used to bug me about open source projects. But apparently they finally figured out that the output of the source needs to be deterministic and match the binaries they ship. This property is called "reproducible builds". Signal claims to have them (modulo some third party libraries), though I haven't personally verified it: https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/

Honestly though, trust boils down to trusting people. I trust Signal because I trust Moxie, and I trust Moxie because of his reputation among the prominent security experts publicly active on the internet, at least the ones that I find convincing. As a security layman, that's the best I can do.

Your "problem" wouldn't be solved by allowing third-party clients. You still don't know what the server source is.

I don't think I'm the only one though, at least to a degree. When the only thing you allow your users is to read the source code, you are technically open-source, but it's the kind of openness that doesn't guarantee anything. More and more often companies use the term "Open source software" because they know that people will walk around the internet and say "it's safe and secure: after all, it's open source!"

OWS is aware of this, which is especially valuable when you brag about privacy as a communications network, but they deliberately chose to limit what you can do with said "open source" – to a degree that's quite ridiculous for a company that calls themselves "Open (...) Systems" :)

You're mixing up rights to the software with rights to Signal's name and infrastructure.

Seriously though, Signal's UI is pretty terrible and they go out of their way to discourage third party clients. It's fine as a replacement for SMS (the way I use it) but if you're used to more fully featured web messengers it's a pretty big leap backwards.

For a while they didn't have support for front-facing cameras, but that was added some time in the last year. Only other problem I've had is that on some Android phones the "voicemail" feature (or w/e it's called) wasn't working well, but not sure if it's still a thing.

Frankly 90% of my frustrations with Signal come from this client, the experience on mobile is better, although still far from perfect. I'm not a fan of pure web clients but web.whatsapp.com is lightyears ahead of Signal's electron bloated and under-featured mess.

The Android client crops the image when I take a picture through the app. No other application does that so I don't really know why it does it. I suspect it's a bug or maybe a bad setting I flipped by mistake but I can't figure out what's going on.

As far as I can tell when you get a new phone the only way to synchronize message history is to create a local backup on one phone, write down the ~24 digit passphrase, transfer the backup by yourself on the new phone then load it from there. If there's a simpler way I haven't found it.

Also I don't think you can move your "secret key" to the new phone, so you have to re-validate your safety number with them. Maybe there's a way to do all that but if I as a technical user wasn't able to figure it out while actively looking for it I have little hope for the average Facebooker.

There's also no support for WhatsApp-style stickers, URL preview, Youtube embedding and all these bells and whistles that I personally don't care for but I'm sure would be missed by many WhatsApp/messenger users.

You're lucky in this case to be on Android. On iOS, Signal blocks any kind of data backups (both on iTunes or on iCloud). [1] So a new iPhone means starting with no chat histories at all. This was requested a long, long time ago (late 2015) and denied stating security as the reason. [2]

[1]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/wiki/FAQ

[2]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/905

But they've been steadily adding features to both. URL previews were recently added, for instance.

Also, I never take pictures in-app, but I just tried it and I can't reproduce your problem with the Android client: there is no cropping on my phone. Maybe an issue with your phone?

It's possible of course but this is a fully updated Nokia 6.1 (running stock Android One) and all other apps work without a hitch. So it's either a setting I flipped somewhere in Signal and I can't find (arguably a symptom of a bad UI), a bug in Signal or a bug in my phone only triggered by Signal.

I think Telegram still has a better user experience.

Also, the Telegram experience is simply stellar throughout, performing brilliantly even under harsh network conditions. Signal just offers an insanely bad user experience.

I don't agree with the claim that Signal has superior UX over Telegram, but it's definitely not insanely bad either. It has some rough edges, and it's desktop client is not that fully featured and doesn't look that great, but otherwise it's a perfectly fine app that my mother can use without problems and without specific instructions.

That's leagues above, say, Riot, or IRC, and I feel that "insanely bad UX" really paints the wrong picture.

Of course Signal's server implementation is still closed but something like Matrix/Riot is too much to ask from "normal people" (like my mother and father who I got onto Singal with ease...).

One is named "Telegram" and one is "Telegram for Desktop" and they have exactly the same icon, but different sets of features.

edit: I was wrong, neither of the two is Electron, see below

Telegram is https://github.com/overtake/TelegramSwift (Swift, Core* libraries)

Both are native.

so... native. I'm glad everyone agrees then.

No. You're missing the bit where "native" means different things in different contexts; for code it means that the code ends up being compiled for the architecture it's running on, but for UI it means that you're using the platform APIs and following system conventions, which Telegram does not.

Lately, IIRC, they have made huge chunks of their core app available as a library to simplify the creation of more clients.

I disagree. It's no harder to grasp than email:

- You go to a website and create an account

- Your share your address with others and they can send mail to you

- Given someone's address, you can send mail to them

I have my (quite technologically challenged) wife using it on mobile and desktop quite happily.

Why? I think Telegram is cool, not because of privacy but because of overall UX (speed, battery usage, reliability, etc.) Is Signal way superior in anything apart from privacy?

It is open source in the sense that you can read the source of the project, but can't really build it and use it for yourselves or verify the build you get via the App Store is the same as open source project. Practically open source as a marketing strategy.

Secondly, it needs a phone number all the time to use, which ties in with personal identity. Why? A better alternative would be a project that allows someone to choose a username and be done with it! Like HN!

The true danger of security is the false sense of it. It makes you feel okay to share personal and sensitive information. ️

I'd love for the Mattix project and riot.im to take off. Hopefully the government of France can throw its weight behind it for good causes.

Thousand times this! And it is actually a problem both with Signal and Telegram. In the latter case, I managed to avoid installing Telegram app on the phone, by using Android emulator and registering from that, but why forcing users to use such workarounds, instead of simply allowing to register without any ties to the telephone. I'd be willing to pay for a messenger which provides privacy and is not tied to the phone.

Like Riot!

My love for the word "dubious" cannot be overstated. While there's been a lot of solidly-seeming (I am not a security researcher) criticism of TG security infrastructure, I don't recall a single instance of chats or metadata being actually compromised so far.

> Signal has a far superior user experience.

Not in this Universe, unfortunately. Signal is borderline unusable, and if I have the choice of pushing Signal vs pushing Telegram, I'll choose the latter - simply because it provides a much much better experience and will be able to retain the audience to a better degree, while people who install Signal will probably go back to Whatsapp/Messenger.

> When you are using private messaging, numerous other features are disabled defeating the point

Such as? The only feature that comes to mind is the absence of sync to other devices (which is kinda expected). Basically all one-on-one chat features are retained in Telegram's secret chats, and keep in mind that Signal doesn't offer these features to begin with.

Telegram delivers messages quickly. Signal...it's anyone's guess whether messages will be delivered or not and how long it may take. Many a times it can be quite slow.

Since Telegram is multi-device (including a web client), activating it on another device is quick. You either get the verification code by a push message on your current client or get an SMS. This happens within a few seconds (for push messages) and within a minute for SMS. Signal is quite flakey, and its verification code SMS may never arrive.

Telegram syncs chats across devices and anytime you switch to a new device and activate it, all your previous chats and groups and channel subscriptions are available on the new device immediately. Signal (this is specific to iOS) prevents backing up chats on iTunes and iCloud. So if you get a new iPhone, then you have to start afresh with no older chat history and have to rejoin groups again.

Telegram has many other features, of which a few are listed below (none of these are on Signal):

* You can set a username and share a https://t.me/<username> link to someone else to get in touch with you, without revealing your phone number to that person. In groups, if there are people who aren't in your contacts list, you would never see their phone number. In Signal, the phone number is shown everywhere, just like on WhatsApp. You cannot hide it from strangers.

* You can @mention people in chats using the username and they get appropriate notifications about the mention, taking them to that message.

* You can edit sent messages for a while (you don't have to send additional messages to correct typos).

* You can start anonymous polls (currently only from phones) in the chats and get responses.

* You can use bots for many different purposes.

* You can create broadcast "channels" that people subscribe to.

* In group chats, the administrators can decide if new members can see all messages from the time the group was started or only the recent 100 messages.

Edit: ok I launched Signal which was installed on my phone since forever but never saw any active use, and I must say I remember it to be much worse than it actually is. Either it's seen a lot of improvement, or my initial experience frustrated me away.

Still, this doesn't invalidate my question as of which other features are missing from TG secret chats; being an active Telegram user I can't put my finger on any.

I think it is pretty self-explanatory that in all these countries, governments haven't been exactly subtle when it comes to their efforts to intercept communications. In my mind, Telegram is the only software that resisted such interference in an almost heroic way and ended up having to move out of the country.

no, it's not. it was created by a russian (pavel durov) but it's developed by a company registered in london with servers all over the world[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Servers

[1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android

With Signal you have to use a cellphone. And that's so unsafe and against any reasonable definition of privacy.

Cellphones are tightly closed, data hungry, tracking devices. A IM that force the user to use a cellphone is a BAD at privacy.

Signal doesn't offer Groups, so it's not something people will switch to. (Signal has Group Chats however, which is something completely different)

I don't know if it is different in other markets but this seems to be common in my circles.

Oh, and BTW: The security situation around Telegram continues to confuse me so I'm personally only recommending it for postcard-style messaging.

That's simply not true. People using it for group chat is a much more recent turn of events.

Signal has no bots. [0] is terrible to use, since you need a new phone number for every new bot you make. (Of course you could all cram it into a single number)

0 https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli

With Telegram you need a phone number to sign-in and then you can forget about it, and use it just on desktop/laptop. You can set a password as a 2 factor authentication (1st: sms or code to another telegram client 2nd: password).

Bullcrap. Signal works fine on data alone. I have Tasker automatically turn on airplane mode when I'm on WiFi and it's never caused me to miss a Signal message.

It seems it's more important to kids today to have stickers and all kind of fancy useless crap. So yeah, it is "borderline unusable" for them. I get this and I don't care.

I guess we have a way to filter out a certain audience with Signal ;)