Since there’s no server storing media, consider saving the stuff you want and dumping all the old photos and video you don’t. It’s a more secure communication tool, not an archive.

I'd take a decent "export my chats" option. I have chat history that goes back years that it's often convenient to be able to search. I'd love to be able to move it off the device, but instead the Signal backup just keeps getting larger and larger...

> I have chat history that goes back years that it's often convenient to be able to search.

> but instead the Signal backup just keeps getting larger and larger...

One begets the other.

> I'd love to be able to move it off the device

If you don't want infinite history, set a conversation length limit. It is in the storage settings.

If you want to backup messages on iOS go complain here[0]. For Android, you already have this ability.

[0]https://community.signalusers.org/t/ios-backup-keeping-messa...

If I set a conversation length limit though it prevents my ability to search back through my history, which is the feature I'd like to preserve. I value that history, it's useful to me.

My ideal solution would be to export any message older than a month to an archive on my NAS, ideally in a format that the app could search on request. Keep my history, keep the on-device space nice and small.

I take advantage of the Android backup feature, and the backup syncs over to my NAS via SyncThing automatically, but that's only useful for restoring a brand new phone up to the latest state.

> My ideal solution would be to export any message older than a month to an archive on my NAS

I'm confused at what is stopping you from doing this?

> ideally in a format that the app could search on request.

Are you not able to import these backups into the desktop client? IIRC it is just reading from a file structure. I don't see why a small script couldn't resolve this. Obviously you wouldn't be able to search on your phone, but you said you didn't want that data on your phone anyways. If you did want to search on your phone from your computer's storage, I think you're asking way too much of them (and in danger of asking them to store data for you, which they never will do). But this is hacker news, and I don't see why you can't hack together that tool in a weekend. Probably just a few beers on a Friday is enough for it tbh.

> I'm confused at what is stopping you from doing this?

As far as I know the backup is encrypted.

> Are you not able to import these backups into the desktop client?

No, the desktop client is not standalone, and ONLY syncs with the a phone to get content. Moreover, if you don't use the client for a period (2-3 weeks in my experience?) it de-syncs that desktop client. Re-connecting that desktop to your phone will only sync messages starting as-of the connection, so there's no way to get the desktop app to pull your whole history. (This is another gripe I have about their sacrifice of actual usability for security that only helps a few very specific use-cases.)

You're probably rigth about hacking something together. Someone has created a library [0] allegedly for decoding the backup files. Friday night is D&D night though, so I haven't had the chance. :-)

[0] https://github.com/pajowu/signal-backup-decode

I was more thinking to port chats from your phone to the desktop. The desktop client is on the NAS and serves as the "storage" where you can search your full backup. I would guess there would be a more difficult solution where you could hack the phone app to sync all data instead of just when your desktop connects. So that solution might take more than just a Saturday night ;)

I agree that there aren't really any great solutions. But the alternative is that Signal stores your data. I think this would make a lot of users very upset and compromise part of Signal's core mission.

Agree, I don't want them storing anything.

This is one area where, and I know what you're going to say, but Matrix actually does really well. My data, on my server, in my house, not tied to any specific single device I own but distributed across several and backed up in an encrypted manner.

But you've got me thinking about the data export option. Saturday is coming. Hmm...

> and I know what you're going to say, but Matrix actually does really well.

I'm actually a fan of Matrix. I just see Matrix and Signal as different tools. You're probably aware of it, but if not, there is a Matrix bridge for Signal.

> But you've got me thinking about the data export option. Saturday is coming. Hmm...

Hey, I'm really hoping it works. Let me know how it goes!

[0] https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/mautrix-signal

Being rude to people by dismissing feature requests as invalid isn't helpful.

Sorry, I'm not trying to be rude. But I am confused at what they want. We have continued the discussion and the picture is clearer to me. Though I'm not sure exactly how Signal can help with it. It still appears to me that the user wants both reduced storage but to maintain search history, which are at odds with one another. Unless they expect Signal to store their history, which those expectations should be shot down because that is against their core philosophy. I did suggest a hack that might fit their needs (full history on desktop but not phone).

How can you be confused?

'I'd take a decent "export my chats" option' is a very simple statement. There is no way within Signal to just export a whole conversation to a file.

> There is no way within Signal to just export a whole conversation to a file.

You can on Android and Desktop. On Mac see ~/Library/Application\ Support/Signal for your data. The only issue is with iOS which I agree is an issue, but does not seem to be the parent's issue.

No you can't. You can find that info at the OS level, or if you use the beta you could get at it via the Developer tools (since it's just a specialized browser window), but there's no userland option to export your conversation in the application.

That's why I wrote 'within Signal.'

As a simple example of how this could get messy, suppose I wanted to back up all my Signal messages, install a different operating system, install Signal there, and load up my old messages. I do have the IT skills to just find the database file and move it manually, but I'm only confident about that because I know its an SQLite database, where the keys are stored etc.

It's still an IT problem I would prefer not to have, vs the simple option of 'Do you want to export this conversation, with all the security implications Y/N' or 'Import this previously archived conversation?'

GP also said they want to be able to search their chat, however, which I believe is the source of the confusion.

Yes, exactly. It's fair, I was not specific enough with my feature request.

But I think that's what godelski is saying is a bit of a contradiction.

If this "accessible searchable archive" is stored "off of the device", how exactly would the device access and search the archive? Facebook can store your Facebook Chat history on their servers no problem, but E2E encryption makes this much more complicated for Signal!

It's not impossible, Apple does it with iMessage, although that was actually a pretty recent addition despite all of Apple's resources!

> But I think that's what godelski is saying is a bit of a contradiction.

Exactly. I'm saying you can't have both low storage and full chat history. These two cannot work without a storage server. I have suggested a method of using the desktop client as the storage server but I agree that there is no great solution.

> It's not impossible, Apple does it with iMessage

That does come with significant tradeoffs though. Now we have to trust Apple that they haven't taken our keys and that they still aren't handing over this data. It is a tricky situation.

Precisely! So just give me an option to export my stuff to a password-protected archive. Make me check a "yes I'm fully aware that this means I am now responsible for the security of this information" if you want. But Signal doesn't let me do this.

Yeah, that would be nice. But an export-import. Or any backup function whatsoever is sorely missing on iOS.

People usually want both and that's what causes most people to ignore good tools.

Doing so comes at a cost to privacy — by signal having a hosting server, even if the contents are E2EE, retrieving and storing these contents creates a metadata trail. I actually go over these drawbacks and tradeoffs in a recent blog post: https://cassieheart.substack.com/p/notes-on-e2ee

Who said anything about a hosting server? Why isn't there a simple option to export a conversation to local storage, encrypted or unencrypted, along with a warning that 'your conversation is now leaving the secure Signal zone.'

For starters, signal retains a conversation for the length of time you grant. That can be indefinite. The way it is retained is in a local storage database. It is intentionally guarded against export (although this is somewhat unavoidable with backup features on phones), so as to avoid companies like Cellebrite making it easy for LE to overstep their bounds and pull the message database when they take your phone. If you want some kind of export interface, your best option is a screenshot — signal does not take any action that threatens the mutual security between parties as explicitly agreed.

I don't want to be handcuffed for my own security, thanks. An export facility has little bearing on the integrity of my communications since a counterparty could simply have their phone taken over if they forgot to set a PIN or gave the PIN up to law enforcement. A warning that the exported data can no longer be considered secure (just like when I save a file or photo) is sufficient.

Meanwhile if my counterparty and I have communications in Signal that we want to preserve at scale, it's impossible to do so. A simple example would be that I have years' worth of conversations with my wife that I can't easily back up any where. We could export every picture and video by hand and screenshot or copy the text of every message, but that would be extremely time-consuming and tedious.

That's the basic problem. The data is already only semi-secure in that it's subject to exfiltration without consent. It's just inconvenient. And where parties do consent, it's very inconvenient because it's many many hours of work; in the end, it's just more security theater.

It's not only your conversation but the one of others too. I like that it's hard to move it elsewhere.

If you don't trust the other end then disappearing messages should be used, simple.

This is one of the problems with Signal having a bit of confusion about what exactly it's use-case is. There are plenty of cases where locking down the ability to save/view/export messages are valuable, and Signal provides tools to be able to do that. Making that the mandatory case though means that it's harder to adopt as a general-purpose communication platform.

The need to decide if the goal is still to get as many people off of SMS/facebook-messenger as possible, or if the goal is to provide extreme security to dissidents and protestors, or if they're going to spend the effort to be able to do both effectively and let you choose which conversations or messages get which level of protection.

But I could just screenshot all of it, and you'd never know. There's a setting to prevent screenshots, but no way to tell if other persons have it enabled or when their setting change.

It's like when Signal asks you to put in your PIN, but it's the same PIN you use to unlock your phone. There's a different Signal PIN, but that functions as a check for when you install Signal on a new device. Your regular PIN is just a repeat of your phone PIN, and thus adds exactly zero security.

Signal is in a weird place where they can do no right by users. It's a team of like 25 developers building extremely complex software criticized by people that don't understand security and trivialize everything. Reddit has a lot of evangelists that can't even program. Their community forums are a dumpster fire where users act like "my way or the world is going to end" (see the current username discussion. Most people are fair but you see[0]). Anything they say on Twitter gets spammed with questions about usernames by people that can't be bothered to see that it is in alpha testing and available for custom builds. And on HN everyone criticizes Signal and compares it to Matrix which is always better for every single purpose.

I do like Signal and I think they have done a lot of good. I do think they have a lot of valid criticism against them but also I think a lot of people aren't providing useful criticism (it is a shame that's happening here, on a forum that should be filled with tech experts). People also aren't realistic. A 25 person team working at a non-profit aren't going to have the same development capacity as a 250 person team.

[0] (maybe go to the bottom) https://community.signalusers.org/t/usernames-in-signal/9157

What do you "Matrix is always better for every single purpose"? Are you saying that you really believe that, or characterizing others as saying that wrongly? I don't know much about either, but I thought both had somewhat new (less-tested) encryption algos (one is 'double-ratchet' or something? that recently has shown security vulnerabilities?)

I'm saying that people put Matrix/Element in competition with Signal. These used to be dominating voices here. I do think the Matrix == Slack and Signal == Text philosophy has become more prominent now (the philosophy I prescribe to). But there are also major discussions about decentralization and users would suggest Matrix was more secure because of that even though at the time group chats were not encrypted (they are now) and E2EE was not enabled by default.

These are purely my observations of the discourse around Signal and should not be taken as a universal truth. Only my subjective reality.

I'm not aware of any major vulnerabilities in Matrix (but I'm not following) closely. I'm also not aware of any in Signal, which I know is frequently audited. There is an SGX attack, but it is often blown out of proportion (highly technical attack that requires an unlocked phone to be in the physical hands of the attacker).

Pretending like Signal is the second coming of Christ and implying that Telegram and all else is insecure and for dumb idiots and may have had something to do with it

That's far from what is happening. Everyone is complaining about Signal, including me.

Telegram gets a lot of shit because they prop themselves up as a privacy app but aren't. The default is that things are not encrypted. They use a proprietary encryption scheme. They store user data on their servers. These are not the marks of a privacy app.

Thanks for letting me know what I think? And we're all aware of Telegram shortcomings here, it was an example and correct me if im wrong but this thread is about Signal?

I explained how imo Signal has burned the goodwill of a some of its early adopters. Meaning not recommending it to my friends and buying my mom an iPhone. Now there's an argument to be made that it's not very smart to dismiss the app, but that's what happened.

I'd be very surprised if they manage to salvage its image at this point

How do I dump all the old photos and videos?

Because the in-app option to clear them all does not free the space.

Except that they make it a pain in the ass to save the stuff you want, because there isn't an easy 'export conversation' function. You can archive conversations so that old ones don't clutter up your chat list, but the only thing you can do with an archived conversation is...un-archive it. It has literally zero utility.

Your only way of saving things is to either manually save every picture and video, or manually highlight and copy the text in your conversations. The latter defeats any security arguments (other than of inconvenience) but also throws away useful information like timestamps of messages.

My Signal database takes up many GB on my phone, and it's constantly complaining about running out of space. Much of this is the years-long record of conversations with my wife. I'd like to back these up, but I can't. Are you gonna tell me that I shouldn't be using a secure messaging app to communicate with my own family members?

How? I’m looking for a “delete all messages over X days old” option.

Not “delete all my chats/delete an entire thread.”

On Android:

Settings > Data and storage > Manage storage > Keep messages

then choose from the listed options

Unfortunately, the option isn’t available on iOS, unless it’s hiding somewhere else.

Telegram has huge amounts of video and audio data but they allow you to easily select and remove the cache for certain chats or sections of chats. It's a UX decision that Signal could "easily" copy.

Weird. Signal is my primary messaging app (on iOS) and I'm sitting at 196MB storage used.