I sent the link to my elderly parents. They both installed it on their Android without a problem. Then I received a video call from my mum - she'd installed the desktop app by herself.

So, get better parents?

That has always been one of the secrets of success: choose your parents wisely...

You joke, but the real world version of that exists and involves children and divorce proceedings.

Jesus!! ,that is just brutal

Mine too. And I tried the Signal video calls the first time with her, they work much better than Zoom or Jitsi! And she already knows how to use the app and I could uninstall WhatsApp. m

Ironically my more elderly contacts added me on Signal nearly immediately after I sent a broadcast message to the WA users I chat with frequently, it was the younger contacts that I had more resistance from.

It isn't harder to use than Whatsapp. It's actually simpler, because it has less useless bells and whistles.

All you need to do is convince them that it's for their good, if they can agree on that then the technicality isn't difficult.

There are a few areas which are harder to use like backups.

I suspect one of the most difficult to address is getting it to successfully evade the random vendor-built aggressive battery saving settings in Android. WhatsApp is usually whitelisted from those so "just works". If you don't do similar things for Signal, it will stop picking messages up/notifying you after a day or two of inactivity.

The backup issue makes Signal infeasible for me to suggest to family/friends as a serious alternative. It's just not up for discussion. People care about preserving their chat histories and I'm not about to put myself in a position where I'm at fault when that stuff goes lost because something or other. There's a lot of sentimental value there that is non-negotiable.

Unfortunately, that leaves me with ... nothing to recommend people switch to.

On that note, this feature - https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/1567 - to allow bulk saving of media to iOS photos also hasn’t been addressed.

Whatsapp allows media from specific chats to be auto saved to photos. It is a very important feature, not sure how these aren’t making the priority bar.

I have the exact same issue with Signal, which is sad, because it's perfect except for the lack automatic and encrypted cloud backup.

Did Signal for Android drop Google Play Services? I thought they still supported push notifications through Google on Android unless you opted out or use a phone without Google Play.

It is a bit harder to use but, what's more important, not as feature-rich and doesn't have literal billions of users. We are looking at the issue of getting someone to switch selfishly, convinced it's about them not being able to figure things out. Instead, it might be that they want a more polished app or one that has all of their contacts, not just us.

Just ask them?

My parents (and my extended family + friends) have been using signal since the Snowden leaks.

All I had to do was ask :) It's not really a hard app to use either, I had a few calls from them when they introduced the PIN stuff and when I or someone else have switched phone but it's not comprehensible. My parents are closing in on 80 now.

And those are also very good questions since the PIN thing was new and new things could indicate being hacked, and people changing their public key is a thing that Signal does seem to try to de-emphasize as a strong security signal so I'm almost more impressed they noticed it and were concerned.

It sounds like your parents are very unusually observant! I have had coworkers much younger than that who cannot be bothered to read messages like that.

I was surprised to see my dad and a few relatives ask me about Signal today and when I logged on, they were on it.

have kids and tell them you'll send them photos via signal.

I'm not kidding - it worked amazingly well for us.

told my father, 75, to install signal. he wrote me on signal five minutes later

I had a video call with them via WhatsApp, and guided them through the whole process on Dad's phone. After some hickups they were able to setup Signal on both of the devices.