Feature Request: Don't automatically unlink until six months have passed

purpleidea commented 3 years ago

[X] I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates

Bug Description

I mostly use signal on an android phone and on a desktop using the signal flatpak. I also use it on my laptop, but much less often. Normally, all three devices keeps their message history in sync.

When I open the laptop version of signal, it sometimes say I need to "relink". I never did anything to unlink. I can still see the device as "linked" in the other signal app's. The only thing that seems to have changed is that I haven't opened it here in at least two weeks.

When I relink, all the conversation history from this time period is lost on this device. This is a simple distributed systems replay bug-- I am shocked that signal would lose data in this way.

Steps to Reproduce

Install signal on more than one device.
Don't open signal on secondary device for over two weeks.
Open it and notice that message history from that intermediate time is lost.
Be surprised about failed distributed systems sync. Keep using IRC since it "just works". (Encryption is great, but "just working" is more important.)

Actual Result:

Lost message history.

Expected Result:

Missing message history is replayed.

Screenshots

N/A

Platform Info

Signal Version:

Latest as of 27/Dec/2020

Operating System:

Linux, Android and Linux.

It's 100% reproducible. It should be easy for the developers to understand.

Thanks

scottnonnenberg-signal commented 3 years ago

Linked devices are unlinked after 30 days of inactivity. This is partially because every message sent to that device is kept on the Signal server until that device starts up again and downloads them.

You mention 'distributed systems' a good bit, but I want to be clear about how Signal works: when a user sends a message to you, they send a separately-encrypted message to you for each of your registered devices. Those messages are saved in that device's queue on the server until it can download it. For mobile devices, they are notified immediately, and download them quickly. Desktop can't do that, so its queues get very large.

Maybe you'd like to change the title to something like 'Feature Request: Don't unlink Desktop after 30 days'?

purpleidea commented 3 years ago

On Mon, Jan 4, 2021 at 7:11 PM Scott Nonnenberg notifications@github.com wrote:

Linked devices are unlinked after 30 days of inactivity. This is partially because every message sent to that device is kept on the Signal server until that device starts up again and downloads them.

You mention 'distributed systems' a good but, but I want to be clear about how Signal works: when a user sends a message to you, they send a separately-encrypted message to you for each of your registered devices. Those messages are saved in that device's queue on the server until it can download it. For mobile devices, they are notified immediately, and download them quickly. Desktop can't do that, so its queues get very large.

Maybe you'd like to change the title to something like 'Feature Request: Don't unlink Desktop after 30 days'?

Yes, there should be a way to change this to at least six months.

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/4730#issuecomment-754301896, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AABA7M2JRC2GU7TBU4OVP4TSYJKKNANCNFSM4VLM7ELA .

reetp commented 3 years ago

Ironically I just relinked one of my Desktops (I switch infrequently between 2) after forgetting the dreaded timeout and I still have a load of OLD messages there up to about the 27th Nov (presumably when I last had the app open).

But no messages between then and now.

I can understand not downloading messages for a NEW linked device, but this was previously linked. It just needs updating.

30 days is just nowhere near enough and hugely frustrating.

scottnonnenberg-signal commented 3 years ago

@reetp @purpleidea Both of you can really help us out by talking about your Desktop usage patterns with a little more detail. Is it once very six weeks that you use Desktop? Why? The more you can tell us, the better we can plan for your use cases.

reetp commented 3 years ago

@reetp @purpleidea Both of you can really help us out by talking about your Desktop usage patterns with a little more detail. Is it once very six weeks that you use Desktop? Why? The more you can tell us, the better we can plan for your use cases.

Thanks for asking.

Mine varies wildly (Covid aside!). Could be 4 - 6 machines over a period of several months. (Offices in 2 different countries and laptops in between)

But mainly between a couple of desktops I have here. Depends on several factors, but I can change office/room every few months, back and forth. There isn't any real great pattern. It's kind of hot desking, but not.

And worse is that I don't always use the desktop app - depends who I am talking too. If it is private/personal I usually use my phone. But if it is work then I use the desktop so I can copy & paste & write stuff easily.

Movements - I could be on Desktop A, move to B for a month or two, NOT use Signal on B, and then go back to A again. And then use Signal again. Then go back to B after a few weeks or more, fire up Signal, and gone again. Ironically this is affected a lot by the weather - hot and cold, aircon & heating....

I can understand not loading history if this is a NEW desktop. But with existing links verified I don't expect them to time out that fast. I could understand if you said 'ahh privacy - we need to clear the app' - but this is my own account and linked to my phone. It IS me!

And if someone else fires up the app they can see the old history even if the link has timed out, which is actually a bug IMHO.

A choice of timeout lengths would help at least somewhat - depends how long they were for, or a (bl**dy) phone reminder that they are going to expire. Like I need yet another notification :-(

Quite simply a lot of the time I no longer bother as it is easier just to use my own Rocket.Chat and give someone an account, or use some other system instead.

rcontisplk commented 3 years ago

I fear that heavy users of Signal and their particular use cases may skew the perception of this FR, whereas new users and lighter users like us will be often tripped up like this. This problem creates artificial friction in the usage of Signal. I'd say I've been using Signal for 5 years and this is a near-constant annoyance. It used to also happen with updates, as well, but they've either gotten less frequent, or less obtrusive.

My use case, during Covid: Work from home, 3 Macs I use every day; 2 of them personal (desktop and laptop) and 1 work (laptop, docked).

Outside of Covid: Work from office, 1 Mac, docked, and 2 Macs at home which I may or may not use in a given day, since I'm at a computer in the office all day.

For the purposes of this comment, let's call them all "desktops".

Signal does NOT run on them until I launch it. I use an app launcher so it takes maybe 3 seconds to launch and be usable, no mouse required. This is easier to me than leaving it running on all computers all the time, since I don't use Signal on desktop in an average day.

I only have 1 friend I communicate with regularly on Signal, so far (though I've seen lots of signups lately!) Typically when I hear from him, I have my mobile on me, and respond right away. More infrequently, I fire up Signal on one of my 3 keyboard-equipped computers; either for a longer response, or to attach a photo I have in my photos gallery or online somewhere that's easier than doing it on mobile.

A significant portion of the time I use Signal on desktop, it complains and needs to be re-linked, which requires 5 clicks on iOS if you left it with a conversation opened (open signal, back, my user icon, linked devices, link new device). Once the device is scanned+relinked, the computer pretends like it's never heard of signal before, and requires me to type in my computer name again (the default is never correct). Now it shows up in my Linked Devices as a separate device, as if it's in no way related to the computer with the same name that was previously linked. (In today's example, I last used my laptop 32 days ago, ugh).

If I find myself launching Signal on a desktop, it is because I intend it to be more convenient than typing a long message or inserting media from mobile, and so it's all about which desktop I happen to be using at that precise moment (work, personal, personal laptop) and has nothing to do with the specific media on that particular machine. So it's pretty much a coin toss, or depends on time of day (if I'm in an office). The pestering for re-linking can be thought of as more like happening once every 10 days, which can pretty easily become "almost every time I try to use Signal on desktop", although, in practice, it's probably only about 1 in 10 times on average.

Increasing the re-link interval to 6 months, or, hell, even 2 months, would make this so much less likely to happen. Or alternately, a bigger effort to redesign the re-linking process to make it much smoother.

Thanks for your consideration!

duck-rh commented 3 years ago

Quack,

I keep being hit by this and that's honestly very annoying.

I cannot understand the logic around "For your security, conversation history isn't transfered to new linked devices" since I just validated the device from my phone and in this case that's not a new one, it's a relink. So now I'm linked again with a gap in history and I cannot continue my conversations and I'll have to use another device to do so until the history is filled again. Which means I'm probably going to use this device less and hit the same problem again faster.

Also when this happens my settings are all reset to default. There's absolutely nothing sensitive in the settings but it takes even more time to fix the situation.

So if you could give use more time, send a warning on the phone and avoid clearing all settings that would really smooth things out without the need to change the whole system.

\_o<

TristanBandat commented 3 years ago

Extending the deadline and sending a notification to the linked phone a week and/or a day before un-linking the desktop app would be great.

Syncing the content when a device is re-linked (not new) is a must have. Maybe this could work when the PC is in the same network as the phone. Then the phone could provide the data and there are no additional server resources needed. Also it would be a lot saver than sending the diff over a server!

kinland commented 3 years ago

In my case, I use signal on my phone 99% of the time. I only use it on the computer when I'm having a very active conversation and typing on my phone is getting tedious, or when I remember to open Signal so that it syncs messages. My computers that have signal on them are off most of the time, so unlinking happens constantly.

I agree with @TristanBandat. Re-linking a device should transfer messages from your phone. Or at least, you ought to be able to import a phone's backup file on the computer.

rcontisplk commented 3 years ago

Open Signal on phone an hour ago, prompted to update app Open Signal on computer just now, asked to relink Relinking again, Linked: 1/21/21 Last Active: 1/24/21 checks date: 2/23/21. Exactly 30 days. Ugh. relink, get asked to software update desktop app

It's endless barriers to actual usage.

SamStephens commented 3 years ago

My usage pattern is mostly on the phone for small text messages, then sporadically on the computer when I want to type a substantial enough message to make a keyboard a boon. I'm an infrequent Signal user to begin with as I only have a couple of Signal contacts, so almost every time I use my computer I have to relink.

The missing messages are a real pain, because the secondary reason I have my computer attached to this account is to serve as a backup if my phone dies, but my computer is missing most messages.

iquito commented 3 years ago

This has happened to me a lot too, and only through reading the issues here was I even aware that there is this 30 day "timeout" - this is not clear at all when using Signal Desktop. There are multiple ways of improving this (many of them could be implemented in parallel), especially in terms of usability:

Ask the user how long the timeout for a new linked device should be, serving both as a way of informing the user that there is such a timeout and giving the user a choice what it should be (because some people might prefer a shorter timeout in terms of security, while others would prefer a very long timeout)
Show a notification on the smartphone a few days before a linked device is unlinked (so there is a possible chance to use the linked device before having to relink)
When relinking, have the option of copying over the missing data from the phone. Often when relinking I am using Signal Desktop to write a longer reply to a new message or open a link in a message, but ironically the message that prompted me to use Signal Desktop is now not available in Signal Desktop, leading to a very bad user experience.

In my case I often narrowly miss the 30 days limit - the last time I used Signal on my laptop was after 35 days, because I switch between a real desktop PC and my laptop, and when I have my desktop available I of course never open Signal on the laptop. But it can also happen the other way round, when going on a longer trip and working with my laptop the PC might not be used for 60 days. Pattern such as these are not uncommon, and so far I have thought that Signal is having technical bugs all the time, because the device shows up under linked devices yet "randomly" a relink is necessary. For an end user not researching the cause this will just reduce the perceived reliability of Signal in general.

kyrofa commented 3 years ago

I'm bit by this pretty often as well. I don't use a smartphone as my daily driver; it usually sits in my desk and I use a flip phone (long story about a lack of self-discipline). This means that, if I open signal on my laptop while away from home and it's been a while since I used it there, I just... can't use it. Until I return home and can pull the smartphone out and re-link. Architecturally, I understand how this is a challenge, as holding a queue for a device that hasn't been seen for a while claims resources. This is, however, my pattern of usage, and 30 days is just not long enough to consider my devices no longer used. I will point out, I definitely go more than 30 days between using my smartphone. The mobile signal app doesn't seem to have a problem with that. Why was this decision made for desktops?

I'd prefer seeing automatic unlinking disappear entirely. Just maintain a queue with a rolling window of 30 days for devices you haven't seen for a while. At least then I'd still be able to USE signal, even if that particular device lost out on messages older than 30 days. And then the problem isn't quite so bad architecturally since we're no longer talking about infinite resources for devices you never see again (at least not as bad as holding a complete queue forever). Even if you decided to purge queues entirely, I'd still be able to use it. When you automatically unlink devices, though, that's where the pain is, at least for my use-case.

hiqua commented 3 years ago

The mobile signal app doesn't seem to have a problem with that.

I don't know what the delay is for the Signal mobile client, but it has to be at least equal: once the primary device (mobile) is "unlinked", everything else will be.

drivetheory commented 3 years ago

I message using only 2 devices, my cell phone and my desktop PC. I especially use my PC when i need to send files, a collection of URLs, etc. Opening Signal on my desktop PC because I do indeed need to send a file to someone only to have it unlinked and not have my recent message history is BULLSHIT especially since the last time I needed to message them using the PC was ~40 days ago.

Do you people (Signal Devs.) have any clue how difficult it is to convince people to use Signal instead of using Skype/WhatsApp/Viber/Telegram/Snapchat?

Forced unlinking is a security benefit sure, but not allowing users of Signal any form of control over the unlinking time period is a major detriment to people actually switching to Signal over the other platforms I previously mentioned.

hiqua commented 3 years ago

@drivetheory given the usage you described, can you explain why you mind so much relinking every 40 days? You don't seem to care about the history of your conversations on desktop anyway. Do you mind the delay it requires? Something else?

Since I'm commenting again, I think a good and simple (partial) solution would be this: https://community.signalusers.org/t/warn-about-impending-device-unlinking/33333

Feel free to discuss it there if interested (feature requests don't belong on GitHub anyway).

kyrofa commented 3 years ago

I think a good and simple (partial) solution would be this: https://community.signalusers.org/t/warn-about-impending-device-unlinking/33333

That wouldn't work for my use-case, anyway.

drivetheory commented 3 years ago

@hiqua please read again... I thought ".....not have my recent message history is BULLSHIT....." was a pretty blatant and colorful description of my dismay that my device becoming unlinked also includes the loss of my conversation history.

drivetheory commented 3 years ago

@hiqua someone wrote me a small book (a message that fills multiple cell phone screens) that i need to research and reply to. And when I went to open Signal on my PC to respond to them as well as send the files requested Signal was unlinked on my PC, which means I had to use the stupid 4" screen on my cell phone for re-reading their multi-page message to copy the message text and directly quote it instead of one of my three 24" LCDs... The loss of the phone syncing the conversations because the device is unlinked is the biggest annoyance.

hiqua commented 3 years ago

".....not have my recent message history is BULLSHIT....."

You didn't really explain why initially though. My point was that if you use the desktop app every 40 days, whatever history there is there is most likely not so relevant to you anyway, since you don't look at it. Not saying the current situation is ideal, just that there might be more convincing use-cases out there.

which means I had to use the stupid 4" screen on my cell phone for re-reading their multi-page message to copy the message text and directly quote it instead of one of my three 24" LCDs...

I'd use "Note to Self" for this, but maybe I misunderstood your situation.

drivetheory commented 3 years ago

@hiqua I thought it was pretty self explanatory, I literally pointed out how difficult it is getting people to switch to using Signal, and pointed out that Signal's default behavior of unlinking, and all the negative effects that has is part of the problem... I literally spend 99% of my time messaging people using https://web.whatsapp.com/ from my PC. Why don't I message them using Signal from my PC? because the few people I have managed to persuade to use it have a nice habit of messaging me when I am not in front of my PC and with messages that can be answered in 1 sentence..... and then as I said, when the day/time comes I need to use my PC to message them on Signal, oh look, it's unlinked (again). I'm actually the exact case of why unlinking makes Signal a worthless messaging app.

kyrofa commented 3 years ago

my recent message history is BULLSHIT

...

makes Signal a worthless messaging app.

Let's please stay civil and try to avoid hyperbole, or it will be difficult for this issue to get much traction.

drivetheory commented 3 years ago

@kyrofa i wouldn't describe any of what I said as hyperbole. did i use colorful language? absolutely, but both of my points are 100% accurate and not even close to hyperbole.

a messaging app that loses the ability to sync message history because of the whims of the developers is exactly bullshit... a piece of software that 'appears' to be 'reliably' usable across multiple devices is worthless when it has failed to be reliable multiple times. This instance where it failed me again just happens to be the third time.... and you know what happens when something fails to be reliable more than twice? people stop using it.

reetp commented 3 years ago

The shame here is that you have a good argument, but phrasing it the way you do IME means devs, and most other people, just ignore you.

Stick to facts, and less abrasive language, hyperbole and opinion, and your POV might have more weight.

I personally don't need to hear it thanks.

l-mb commented 3 years ago

I understand why it is done, but the warning message on the mobile device a few days in advance would be really nice to have.

hiqua commented 3 years ago

@l-mb I fully agree, so I suggest you upvote this: https://community.signalusers.org/t/warn-about-impending-device-unlinking/33333

duck-rh commented 3 years ago

@hiqua what is this discourse post providing that this BR does not? I think people already made it clear that was a problem and suggested several improvements. Warning is nice but even without changing the whole system this is still insufficient (more time, no clearing of the prefs…).

As for your point on the use of coming back to a device you did not use for some time I would add people can be busy, ill, or simply go on vacation. In my case work trips and vacation and suddenly all my home devices are out of the picture. The fact you do not get any piece of history back when you relink makes it very hard to use these device again after relinking (as already stated before).

geofire commented 2 years ago

I really do try to convince my friends and family to jump over to Signal, promoting the desktop app specifically, though I've not had a lot of luck, because of the dropping of conversations on unlinking issue.

The unlinking issue, and subsequent lost conversation history, makes Signal feel very unpolished. When an app is vying for market share, perception is hugely important in uptake, especially for non-technical users. I believe the unlinking issue is hurting it's uptake significantly, especially when I've updated the Signal app on my desktop only to have it completely drop the entire conversation history. That kills any new user's willingness to use the application, so they'll use something more reliable even if it is less secure - because it just works.

If dropping inactive devices after 30 days is going to remain a thing, because server time and storage is expensive, then fair call only if Signal is made much more user friendly, by allowing us the option to transfer our messages securely back to our unlinked devices once they're re-linked. For example:

past 90 days of messages directly through Signal's servers (as a compromise on functionality vs. server load/cost), and
entire conversation history if a direct, secure, local connection is found between Signal Mobile and Signal Desktop (i.e. the devices are on the same local network).

This 'restore' feature would immediately be initiated after the re-linking procedure (and can only be triggered by re-linking), as the devices should be within close proximity to each other.

It's worth noting that WhatsApp has started a syncing feature in their multi-device beta: https://faq.whatsapp.com/web/chats/about-message-history-on-companion-devices

I feel that Signal is being left behind, because consistent, reliable and readily available message sync is a huge requirement these days. Security shouldn't compromise usability and user friendliness (which, for what it's worth, Signal does remarkably well considering that it is considered a de facto standard in secure messaging), otherwise Signal will fail to achieve significant market penetration, in my view.

kyrofa commented 2 years ago

By the way, I hereby offer to contribute this work if we can get sign off on the direction forward.

Whysuchlovelyusernames commented 2 years ago

I am a very occasional Signal user for a number of reasons, mostly related to various work/personal boundaries, where I just receive messages or have short replies on my mobile.

However, every once in a while I do some heavier messaging over Signal, i.e. reading long messages/entering long replies, having conversations etc. At that point I want to be able to use the Signal Desktop on any of my multiple computers and continue in the conversation that made me switch from the mobile app. The Signal Desktop then asks me to relink, I evaluate whether to ignore the issue and deal with it outside the Signal, which will frustrate people in the conversation, and then I either relink and improvise - because, of course, Signal has no idea about the last conversation - all the while wanting to smash the computer into the wall and hating every minute of it, or do it outside the Signal, hating myself for complicating things for other people, but without the urge for destruction.

During all that time I also have extremely negative feelings towards (a) developers, (b) people because of whom I use Signal, and (c) myself for having negative feelings towards people providing a free tool which would have been nice to use in theory/if my circumstances were different and people just wanting to use what they were told to use.

(Venting after the latest relink, please don't mind the extra bits around the usage scenario...)

purpleidea commented 2 years ago

Why is this closed??? It's not fixed.

kyrofa commented 2 years ago

@purpleidea please see #5541. Signal would like such discussions to be in the community forums instead of the issue tracker. That could have been communicated a bit better, I agree.

aggieben commented 2 years ago

It's understandable that discussions would be better in the forum. However, it would also be very useful to those of us interested in this issue if the discussion were linked here. Right now the only link is to a meta-discussion with a massive list of links back to issues. Which discussion corresponds to this issue?

mayurankv commented 2 years ago

Bump what aggieben said

RayOei commented 2 years ago

Discussion can be found here: https://community.signalusers.org/t/dont-unlink-devices-after-30-days/37414

traceypooh commented 2 years ago

it doesnt work for sh*t for me. i use it, typing replies to messages on my laptop and dialogue back and forth between it, and likewise w/ phone.

i'm getting auto-delinked w/i a week of GET and SEND activity on my laptop at times. basically, it seems totally random, and super frustrating.

scottnonnenberg-signal commented 2 years ago

@traceypooh It should take 30 days for an auto-unlink to happen. We'd certainly appreciate debug logs to help track down what's going wrong. Please consider entering a new bug, since this is a feature request.

traceypooh commented 2 years ago

super frustrating. how am i sure this happened yet again (probably at least the 10th time across two desktops (macs) since i started)?

because i've travelled across the US w/ only my laptop and been having multiple discussions on phone and laptop for past two weeks.

and so today? i get delinked again. when i've clearly used it on desktop w/i last 14 days....

while most of the other delinkings have plausibly happened due to 30d+ of inactivity (never was aware of that until recently), not all of them have been so.

so this time, yah, i was like... you've got to be @#*ing kidding me... here we go again...

traceypooh commented 2 years ago

but yes, another strong vote for 6mo+ to delink. and to phone robo message "we're going to trash your life on device named X -- unless you login (is only login needed? or SEND/REPLY) in the next 3 days" (type thing) that i've seen in other issues/feature requests/reddit threads/community forum threads

traceypooh commented 2 years ago

lastly, because my history is gone, it only shows (even w/ the detailed SAVE button) logs for today since re-linking. so don't ... see how that would end up helping debug this?

scottnonnenberg-signal commented 2 years ago

Please send the logs, and we'll see if we can get something useful out of it. Thanks!

kyrofa commented 2 years ago

@scottnonnenberg-signal I want to raise again my offer to implement the fix for this issue if we can get some agreement on what that is.

laanwj commented 2 years ago

The unlinking issue, and subsequent lost conversation history, makes Signal feel very unpolished.

I agree. Re-linking is straightforward enough, but losing conversation history is the frustrating part. Also I think there could be better UI feedback on link expiry. I wasn't even sure what happened every time, before someone directed me here.

scottnonnenberg-signal commented 2 years ago

@laanwj You should not be losing conversation history when Desktop is auto-unlinked. If you have gotten a new phone and re-registered with a new number, then re-link will delete everything. If you're losing all of your data on re-link, please provide a debug log here or to support@signal.org.

xigarete commented 2 years ago

@laanwj You should not be losing conversation history when Desktop is auto-unlinked. If you have gotten a new phone and re-registered with a new number, then re-link will delete everything. If you're losing all of your data on re-link, please provide a debug log here or to support@signal.org.

I think there's a big disconnect here between what Signal is talking about in this thread vs what actually users mean. (at least in my opinion. Or at least what I mean... and I like to think I'm a fairly sophisticated user... but I'm someone who logged in today because it's all infuriating)

The messaging around several linking/transfer steps is confusing and often sounds like I don't know if I'm about to trigger data loss. But I guess I have to click it anyway because the other things don't seem to be working.
I want this to be a mainstream tool but it can't achieve that if it's actually impossible in any way shape or form to transfer or backup messages outside limited contexts of a new device. Devices die all the time.

And that's fundamentally the "lost messages" problem here -- at some point you have to cap the queues, of course and that means a gap in the messages sent directly to that device. But if the user above is sitting there staring at a message on their phone they should be able to approve that going to their other devices. If they can't rectify the gap it's a lost message to the user even if it's never a lost comm in the infrastructure.

Someone with access to my signal and a few minutes can already screenshot all your messages, right? So I don't see how there can be a real security implication here. The result is it being obnoxious without being safer. And you already transfer messages phone -> phone and phone to ipad and ipad to ipad but not ipad to phone. Really?

If you want to close the one hole in the above, then at most let someone approve transferring bulk messages and then have to wait 20 minutes to be allowed to do it, so they had to have device access as long as they would to send screenshots.

I think this is less important, but I also think relinking should be specific and simpler than linking. If I have a device that was already linked and was not removed but merely expired I should be able to relink it with one click on that device that prompts a popup with one click on a current device.

I'm salty because my phone died and despite having two other devices with message history it seems I have to willingly click things that are going to delete it.

du-a-new commented 1 year ago

Why can't there be a feature of syncing device-messages? It is stupid that I have missing messages on Desktop because I didn't log in for 30 days. People have multiple computers and don't use them as often for messaging as they use their phones. And when they do they get this really awkward experience..

For now the best way to use Signal on Desktop is using a phone screencast.

freepcb commented 1 year ago

I also have this problem with Signal and it is incredibly annoying. So, I just created a batch file for Windows called "launchSignal.bat" containing the following lines: echo Starting Signal start "" "C:\Users\allan\AppData\Local\Programs\signal-desktop\Signal.exe" pause The "pause" statement is to keep the command window open so I can see any error messages. My next step will be to install this into my Startup folder. and see if it works. If so, it should launch signal on every startup so hopefully Signal will stay linked. I'll edit this post after I try it..

Edit: OK, it works! I'll leave the "pause" statement in for now, but eventually I'll probably remove it. BTW, I got to my Startup folder by pressing Start then typing "Run" in the search box, then typing "shell:startup" in the Run window, then pasting a shortcut to my batch file into the folder that opens.

unusualbob commented 1 year ago

I can totally grasp the need for this, if not for this rule then signal ends up storing all the messages for any device that was ever linked, which includes images and videos. That really could be a lot of storage. The 30 day TTL probably saves signal a ton of cost on data storage.

That being said, the 30 day cutoff really hurts those of us that may not launch the desktop app for just over a month. Maybe a middle ground can be found?

At a minimum it would be really nice if a push notification could be sent a user's phone to let them know when the 30 day barrier is close to being hit for a linked device. Then another when the device is actually unlinked so that it is not a surprise to the user the next time they go to use the linked device.

If you're willing to do a bit more, maybe for devices not detected for 30 days ('unsynced' devices), any messages older than some threshold are discarded, maybe only the last 7 days or so are kept. If that storage is still too much, maybe any multimedia contained in the messages is discarded, or discarded after a shorter threshold, maybe 8-36 hours. When the 'unsynced' device reconnects, a similar banner to the unlinked one lets the user know that due to being disconnected for more than 30 days the message history is truncated. Any multimedia messages (if you choose to discard them at a different rate than regular ones) that were within the relevant message history would simply be replaced with some relevant message indicating it was purged before the device was reconnected.

Of course there should still be a device cut off, say max 180 days would be a nice large window. If you can't do that then 90 would likely cover a lot of us. Maybe make it user selectable during device linking with a default to 30? That way the default value is the most secure, but it could be set longer for those of us that run into this issue.

AFAIK we don't know what signal's data storage costs look like, but maybe these could be a way to alleviate some of the costs while also allowing us to keep our devices linked.

xigarete commented 1 year ago

I’d be pretty happy if whatever would transfer to a new phone would also transfer to desktop and vise versa.

No addl. storage.

Sent from my pocket

On Mar 17, 2023, at 4:29 PM, Rob Riddle @.***> wrote:

I can totally grasp the need for this, if not for this rule then signal ends up storing all the messages for any device that was ever linked, which includes images and videos. That really could be a lot of storage. The 30 day TTL probably saves signal a ton of cost on data storage.

That being said, the 30 day cutoff really hurts those of us that may not launch the desktop app for just over a month. Maybe a middle ground can be found?

At a minimum it would be really nice if a push notification could be sent a user's phone to let them know when the 30 day barrier is close to being hit for a linked device. Then another when the device is actually unlinked so that it is not a surprise to the user the next time they go to use the linked device.

If you're willing to do a bit more, maybe for devices not detected for 30 days ('unsynced' devices), any messages older than some threshold are discarded, maybe only the last 7 days or so are kept. If that storage is still too much, maybe any multimedia contained in the messages is discarded, or discarded after a shorter threshold, maybe 8-36 hours. When the 'unsynced' device reconnects, a similar banner to the unlinked one lets the user know that due to being disconnected for more than 30 days the message history is truncated. Any multimedia messages (if you choose to discard them at a different rate than regular ones) that were within the relevant message history would simply be replaced with some relevant message indicating it was purged before the device was reconnected.

Of course there should still be a device cut off, say max 180 days would be a nice large window. If you can't do that then 90 would likely cover a lot of us. Maybe make it user selectable during device linking with a default to 30? That way the default value is the most secure, but it could be set longer for those of us that run into this issue.

AFAIK we don't know what signal's data storage costs look like, but maybe these could be a way to alleviate some of the costs while also allowing us to keep our devices linked.

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Imerion commented 1 year ago

I can confirm this is a problem. I want to use Signal on desktop only. I don't want the app on my phone, only on my Linux laptop. (Several reasons for this. I don't want messages to show up on my phone, I only want them when I launch the desktop app, it increases battery usage on my phone a lot, etc). Despite only being a week since I launched the Signal desktop app I again have to connect to my phone, which means installing the phone app again, configuring it, connecting to desktop and then removing the phone app again. Surely there could be an option to at least not have to connect to the phone if the desktop app has been in use withing the last 30 days?

signalapp / Signal-Desktop