> but I also like being able to keep my message history around and search my conversations for something that happened a year ago

I'm dreading the day where I lose or break my iPhone and thus lose my Signal chat history. I've been using Signal for years, but this makes me still prefer other messengers when starting new chats, even if Telegram (for example) is not e2e encrypted.

(Unfortunately, I've long overcome the "I don't want another app" thing and just installed all the messaging apps. Although I kind of want to look into setting up Matrix bridges and merging everything into Element.)