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Standalone Signal Desktop
- fiatjaf 9y ago"If you’ve never used Signal Desktop before, this is a great chance to start. Download the app, pair it with your phone, and experience private messaging with all ten fingers." So it is not _really_ standalone. You still need a phone. This is still a geeky version of WhatsApp. In fact, why would I want to use this instead of WhatsApp if they're basically using the same encryption features and I have to trust the same people (who assert that)? (I don't use WhatsApp, I think it is the worst mankind nightmare.)
- JshWright 9y agoSo now rather than being able to use my existing browser runtime with the Chrome extension version, I get to run yet another browser runtime that only runs Signal... Yay...
- nikisweeting 9y agoWhy no web app? Moxie closed https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop/issues/723 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop/issues/723 without giving any reasoning. Can someone link me to a blog post that explains why Signal is refusing to release a web version? I cannot run another Electron app on my computer, I simply do not have the RAM left. Signal as a web-app would allow me to put it inside of Franz or Rambox, where all my other chat services live. Right now Signal is the only chat service that I cannot run in Rambox or a browser. All the other major chat services provide a web-app that can run in a browser: - messenger - whatsapp - wechat - hangouts - skype - zulip These apps all have web versions for good reason, a website is the most versatile, portable way to share an application with users who's devices you cant support individually. If a user's chrome extension gets hacked a steals their messages that's their fault, it should be the choice of the user whether they run the app in an insecure environment. After all, you're relying on them to not have keyloggers or rootkits on their computers that run the desktop app. I don't see any reasoning for Signal to not follow WhatsApp's model and release a web-app that links to your phone.
- woolvalley 9y agoThey are a small non-profit dev group, and resource wise it's probably not worth it for them. You could indirectly solve this problem by making some sort of electron multiplexer that could take multiple electron apps and make them share the same electron host browser, achieving the same thing you have now. I personally just use a bluetooth keyboard and my phone. I get a native app, keyboard typing and nothing hogging resources on my computer.
- ezekg 9y agoThe issue with doing that though is that most Electron apps don’t use the same version of Electron. I have apps I’ve built that are still running pre-v1 because updating has been too much of a headache.
- Nition 9y agoLike DLL Hell all over again.
- digi_owl 9y agoI can't help shake that DLL and similar is a symptom of a culture of lax backwards compatibility upstream.
- jacobush 9y agoMicrosoft tried to be backwards compatible with msvcrt.dll . It’s just too much inertia. Also you need to be bug for bug compatible or you may break some old app. Apps may even depend upon behaviour you didn’t know was there.
- digi_owl 9y agoYes there is a point of diminishing return. But all too often these days it feels like projects are not ever trying.
- openfuture 9y agoI want to say "finally!" but they're deprecating the chrome extension so now my chromebook won't be connected anymore but at least I'll be able to get rid of chromium on my desktop. Guess you can never please everyone. But in all seriousness thank you for the great work, this is excellent news!
- BHSPitMonkey 9y agoDeprecating doesn't necessarily mean you can't keep using what's already there. Even if it's removed from the store you should still be able to run it locally.
- rrix2 9y agoNot if Chromium removes support for packaged apps: https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.ht...
- mastax 9y ago> All types of Chrome apps will remain supported and maintained on Chrome OS for the foreseeable future.
- rrix2 9y agoAlso, hi, we both used to hang out in #teensonlinux back in the day! Always good to see handles from that old place randomly pop up
- fattire 9y agoThat you won't be able to run it on a chromebook any more is a big deal actually... will you be able to sync the android version on chromebook w/o a phone #? I haven't tried that but I don't think you can "slave" the android version to an existing account the way you do the standalone app.
- Vinnl 9y agoUnfortunately that was going to happen anyway, as Google's planned to deprecate Chrome apps. Note sure if in general, or if they'd still be supported in Chromebooks, but it's quite a lot of work to support it just for Chromebooks.
- j7ake 9y agoDoes signal do search for text as well as a way to view all images exchanged within a chat ? The only way I found was to scroll up while keeping my eyes focused on certain key words or images. Not a pleasant experience.
- unhammer 9y agowork in progress, non-trivial on phone at least: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/1232#issuecomment-299583255 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/1232...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tmikaeld 9y agoAnother 205MB Electron App to the collection, at least it's 50MB smaller than Wire.
- amedvednikov 9y agoeul is a light (4 MB) native desktop client for all popular messengers: https://eul.im https://eul.im Signal support is coming later this year. Right now it supports Slack, Skype, Facebook, and Gmail.
- jotto 9y agois eul open source?
- Deimorz 9y agoThe author said yesterday that he wants to open-source it, but won't be able to do it fully (he didn't elaborate on why not): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15587970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15587970
- woolvalley 9y agoI think he is waiting for it to be a certain level of 'done' before he open sources it. Open sourcing something creates it's own workload.
- Deimorz 9y agoNo, I think it's more than that. He specifically said that it won't be possible to open-source some parts.
- amedvednikov 9y agoYou both are right actually :)
- 9y ago
- MattSteelblade 9y agoI'm thrilled, it now finally works over 443.
- nickpp 9y agoCan we please stop calling Webapps that come with the whole browser desktop apps? The fact that you give me to install a dedicated browser for your web app does not magically make it desktop app. It makes it a worse web app, which does not even share the browser runtime with other web apps. Desktop apps are supposed to be: native code, well integrated in the OS, still working when the net is down and using system widgets and OS look&feel.
- fron 9y ago> Desktop apps are supposed to be: native code That excludes every single .NET application. > well integrated in the OS Don't even know what you mean by this. > still working when the net is down Not necessarily, a "native" app for Signal still wouldn't work if the net was down. > and using system widgets and OS look&feel I guess that excludes pretty much anything built with Qt.
- AckSyn 9y ago.NET is included with Windows and can't be removed.
- fron 9y agoCorrect, but IL isn't 'native code'
- raarts 9y agoWell call me picky, but I find electron apps to be super wasteful and gobbling up memory like there's no tomorrow. Sure I can understand the reasons behind it, it's JavaScript, programmers for that are abundant, is multi platform because web, but still. If you look at the functionality offered versus the resources used it's just ridiculous. I'd like to see a graph of code/memory used vs unused in such binaries.
- fron 9y agoI completely agree that most of them are extreme memory hogs. I was just pointing out that the previous commenter's definition of a desktop application made almost no sense to me.
- tomc1985 9y agoNot more Electron garbage!
- whostolemyhat 9y agoNot more comments complaining about Electron!
- tomc1985 9y agoNot more lemmings defending Electron!
- touart 9y agoIs there a web version available? web.whatsapp.com come in handy if you don't like electron apps.
- mrmondo 9y agoWas happy to see this as it was the only reason I had Chromium on my machine - launched it and right off the bat it uses 350MB of memory! Inspecting the app, it appears to be just another Javascript app (Electron).
- iwalsh 9y agoWhat does this mean for ChromeOS users? Will Signal be maintained for ChromeOS or will those users no longer be able to use Signal?
- verbify 9y agoIt's ludicrous that you need javascript enabled to download a secure messaging app.
- mfwoods 9y agoFor those that don't want to enable Javascript, these are the hidden Linux instructions: $ curl -s https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt/keys.asc | sudo apt-key add - $ echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt xenial main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/signal-xenial.list $ sudo apt update && sudo apt install signal-desktop
- frabbit 9y agoHow are we supposed to verify keys.asc? (To be a bit more explicit: searching for either the pub (57F6FB06) or sub(0E46390F) keys on hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net returns no result)
- mfwoods 9y agoJust because it's on a keyserver doesn't mean it's trustworthy. Keyservers do no verification of any kind on the keys they host. If you(r system) trust the certificate that https://updates.signal.org/ https://updates.signal.org/ is using, you should be confident that you are getting the correct keys. (You shouldn't trust a stranger on the internet, but I am getting the same keys when I download them.)
- acdha 9y agoYou are willing to run their code on your computer with full access to your data but not in the heavily-sandboxed browser environment?
- scott_karana 9y agoVerbify didn't say that at all. It's ludicrous that you can't download a security-focused app when your browser settings are unusually secure. ;)
- etiam 9y agoSupport post for how to migrate: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/115002502511-How-do-I-migrate-messages-to-the-new-Signal-Desktop- https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/115002502511-Ho...
- kome 9y agoSignal Desktop is not really standalone, because you still need to pair it with your phone. And the phone should be turned on. I am very privacy conscious, and I don't use a smartphone, at all, because it's basically a spying device in your pocket. Why Signal is all about privacy and then it forces me to pair it with a telephone? Telegram desktop is really standalone. They require a telephone number too (and that's very annoying), but they don't require having a smartphone or keeping your phone open. My phone number on telegram is not even my phone number anymore, and it doesn't make any difference... Privacy wise is far from being perfect, but it's already better. At least it's usable.
- wakkaflokka 9y agoCan you expand more on your personal decision to be so privacy conscious?
- pspeter3 9y agoIs Telegram as secure as Signal though?
- josh2600 9y agoNo.
- matt_kantor 9y agoThis comment is not helpful.
- Dowwie 9y agocan't I just be able to freely remove and add contacts? I'm not asking for much
- noja 9y ago> Linux distributions supporting APT, like Ubuntu or Debian Oh come on guys. Don't forget Fedora. Fedora means SELinux. SELinux means you are getting the people who value security.
- daxorid 9y agoI think you underestimate the number of people whose first post-installation task is setenforce 0
- richardwhiuk 9y agoFedora doesn't support APT right? It needs to be packaged separately? So it's a whole bunch of work for a small user base.
- noja 9y agoIt's a different user base. Give us a github repo and we can build it ourself. Let me see if I can find one. Edit: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop
- kuschku 9y agoMoxie strictly disagrees with that, and has previously tried to shut down every third-party build of Signal, even in repos for distros or F-Droid. He only wants users to get Signal builds from himself, and no one else.
- BlackjackCF 9y agoFinally! Here's to hoping the desktop client outperforms the Chrome extension.
- xwvvvvwx 9y agoSignal is fantastic. Huge thanks to the team for their efforts. Really happy to have it as a standalone app outside of Chrome now.
- csomar 9y agoPrivacy. Privacy. Privacy. Bla, bla, bla... Now we are going to ask for your phone number. Am I the only one who thinks this defeats the whole point?
- elago 9y agoNo. Signals okay for a drop in replacement for a phones built-in text messaging app (unfortunately really few of my contacts are using it) but once I'm on a laptop/PC there are way better messaging apps imo. Signal feels slightly like the pigs in Animal Farm getting everyone riled up against the unjust farmers, only to take their place.
- Propen 9y agoSignal is about _privacy_ not necessarily anonymity. Understand the difference? edit: And anyways, if you read their blog posts you can see how you phone number is only required to make it easy to connect for the masses. You already have your social graph in your contact book.
- dbrgn 9y agoDoes it still store all data unencrypted on the disk? https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop/issues/1017 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop/issues/1017
- metilda 9y agoUse full disk encryption, or store Signal's database in an encrypted volume. Signal for Android only has encryption due to the litany of issues associated with FDE on android, from wiping your phone when you encrypt it, to accidentally bricking your phone cause your vendor broke FDE in their Android build.
- enraged_camel 9y agoWow, reading that thread basically made me decide against using Signal. For an app that is supposed to be the pinnacle of secure messaging, leaving anything unencrypted on the local device is just breathtakingly negligent. The way moxie ushers people to take the discussion elsewhere doesn't help either. It just reinforces the perception that he doesn't care.
- ec109685 9y agoShouldn’t you instead just encrypt your disk entirely?
- metilda 9y agoThat is Moxie's main point, full disk encryption should be used everywhere, and encrypting Signal's message database on Android is purely due to full disk encryption on Android being a steaming pile or bricking your phone.
- enraged_camel 9y agoI should, and do, but a lot of non-techies don't, and this design decision might end up with their Signal messages compromised. I mean isn't one of Signal's target audience people like journalists and activists?
- laretluval 9y agoIt's still insane and confusing that you need a phone number to use Signal. It's almost as if they want to make it hard to be anonymous.
- Foxboron 9y agoSignal provides privacy, not anonymity. It's a hard trade off sometimes, but it's easier for wider adoption.
- laretluval 9y agoIt's hard to imagine how requiring a phone number makes adoption wider.
- nullc 9y agoMore "security" software that blindly accepts effectively unaudible binary updates from a third party.
- biostasis 9y agoDesign is somehow looking related to Telegram...
- RickS 9y agoAnd nearly indistinguishable from iMessage on OSX. Chrysler shouldn't make their tires square just because Ford was first to the circle. I'm happy they're not burning cycles reinventing the wheel.
- jsnar 9y agoUsing Electron is a bad idea: it's not secure. Electron has many security vulnerabilities. The latest version is still based on old Chromium (58 & 59) so it inherits many of the security vulnerabilities published in Chromium 60, 61 and 62
- jsnar 9y agoSee here for the security issues published in Chrome stable releases in those versions: https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2017/07/stable-channel-update-for-desktop.html https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2017/07/stable-channel... https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2017/09/stable-channel-update-for-desktop.html https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2017/09/stable-channel... https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2017/10/stable-channel-update-for-desktop.html https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2017/10/stable-channel...
- halayli 9y agobrowser security vulnerabilities are expensive and heavily scrutinized. Just because they are on top of it for reporting vulnerabilities and fixes so that you become aware of it doesn’t make the alternatives more secure. You just wouldn’t be aware of them which is more dangerous.
- kijiki 9y agoSure, but it doesn't pull HTML or Javascript from servers, it is all packaged along with the native Electron runtime. Exploiting a Javascript vulnerability is an absurd waste of time when you could just add a backdoor or whatever to the native code.
- flareback 9y agoI was ready to get excited, I installed the app and one contact showed up. Looks like it only works between signal users.
- geokon 9y agoThe weird thing that isn't supported is Signal on 2 Android devices. I tried to install in on my tablet, but if I put in my phone number it blocks the app on my phone... bewildering.. Kinda the Wechat model
- smcleod 9y agoOther than the memory usage - these are problems I've encountered thus far: - It said it was 'Importing contacts and messages' when I signed in without first prompting me if that was OK. - Importing contacts and messages failed. - Manually importing contacts fails. - Conversations show up, but each message just shows as an error. - Deleting a conversation doesn't delete it, it just makes it as read. - Messages marked as read randomly reappear as unread. - Incorrect unread message count next to conversations list. - Messages often don't arrive at all, seems at random. - The application loses it's 'link' to your account seemingly at random upon launch and needs to be relinked. - Appears to use an outdated version of electron with published security vulnerabilities.
- darklajid 9y agoI'm not trying to be snarky here, but .. did you report those on GitHub / to the Signal developers?
- Vinnl 9y agoLink to lower the barrier: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop/issues/new https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop/issues/new
- aluhut 9y agoNot a single of those happened to me. Are you sure there is nothing wrong with your PC? It uses 130MB RAM here (Win). How much is it on your side?
- mrmondo 9y agoHowdy, glad to hear it’s less for you, that’s a much more reasonable amount of memory to use but are you sure you’re including all active memory from each of its processes / worker threads?
- aluhut 9y agoYes I did as long as those 4(5?) starting with "Signal*" were all to count. But your other problems go far beyond that.
- lewisl9029 9y agoAny reason why there's not more support for the Progressive Web Apps standard on desktop browsers [1]? It seems to me that many Electron apps these days are super-thin wrappers around a web app that don't actually need the full desktop access offered by Electron (things like local filesystem access, multi-process execution, multi-window management, arbitrary node APIs, etc). They just need a way for users to "install" the app so that it 1) has a separate shortcut and appears in a separate window from the browser, 2) can send notifications through the native notifications stack, and use a fallback on systems where one isn't available, 3) is available for use offline. The Progressive Web Apps spec has answers to all of these problems, and it would vastly improve the resource usage model compared to Electron because each PWA would share the same browser runtime as the user's browser of choice, which is more likely than not running 24/7 anyways. Security-minded apps like Signal might need more guarantees such as asset verification and version pinning on install, but surely those could be added to the spec, as they would be beneficial for other Progressive Web Apps as well. I know PWA was designed with mobile apps in mind originally, but it'd be a shame to limit it to that use case, as there is clearly a lot of demand for building desktop apps with web technologies, and PWA sounds like an excellent alternative to the current status quo that's dominated by Electron. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Progressive https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Progressive
- captainmuon 9y agoIt's coming, at least for Edge on Windows. If you add appropriate meta tags, your app will even automatically appear in the windows store. The web platform is a really great example of backwards compatibility - it has to, because people wouldn't tolerate breaking changes to websites. Browsers (and Electron) have made a lot of progress in the last years, but now I think this platform is very capable and you can get a lot done without waiting for a new feature. This makes something like Electron a good candidate to ship with the OS. Remove the burden of updates from the individual vendors, and use a lot less disk space and memory because there is only one runtime. I don't see installable Electron any time soon, but interestingly Edge might fulfill that role on Windows (if it is compatible and PWAs are powerful enough to replace most electron apps).
- teekert 9y agoWhy an apt package for Debian derivatives only, where they could have opted for a snap and supported a lot more distros: https://snapcraft.io/ https://snapcraft.io/ I'm very happy with it nonetheless!!
- petre 9y agoOr an appimage https://appimage.org/ https://appimage.org/.
- Klasiaster 9y agoOr Flatpak, that would be nice. But even better would be if you could import the Chrome stuff - is it possible?
- petre 9y agoStill requires pairing with my phone, thus not standalone. Thank you but I'll just keep using Wire on the desktop and Signal + Wire on mobile. Too bad, because the mobile version is really good.
- teekert 9y agoGreat! But it found back some old groups with the same logo as a new group (what a pain if someone changes their phone, but I understand it is for security reasons), took me some tries to find what is what. It's doesn't sync back my older messages apparently, again, probably for security reasons. I was also unable to delete the old groups although they were long deleted from my phone, they popped up there again. After deleting them on my phone, they still remain on the desktop.
- unicornporn 9y agoI so wish more people discovered Matrix or https://riot.im https://riot.im. To me it's simpler and works better than Signal while being decentralized and federated. It has excellent clients for all platforms (and these keep measages in sync with each other) and does not require a phone number.
- terraforming 9y agoMatrix is fantastic. However, riot desktop sucks in my opinion. Yet again, an electron app. You say that matrix "has excellent clients for all platforms". That is simply not true at this time. For linux, there's pretty much only 1 client that's currently usable, and that is riot (electron app). There's a fantastic one in the works, qmatrixclient (quaternion: https://github.com/QMatrixClient/Quaternion https://github.com/QMatrixClient/Quaternion), but it doesn't support E2EE yet.
- drdaeman 9y agoThere is also nheko (https://github.com/mujx/nheko https://github.com/mujx/nheko), but it's not particularly mature and also has no Olm/E2EE support (https://github.com/mujx/nheko/issues/13 https://github.com/mujx/nheko/issues/13)
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoThere is a Weechat plugin. https://github.com/torhve/weechat-matrix-protocol-script https://github.com/torhve/weechat-matrix-protocol-script
- vertex-four 9y agoI don't agree that Matrix has excellent clients for all platforms - IMHO, only Riot Web/Desktop is usable, and that only in comparison to other open-source messaging software - it doesn't compete against pretty much anything that people make money off of. Riot iOS and Android both make it nearly impossible to handle a large amount of chatrooms, IME. And nothing else implements even most important features of Matrix. The developers badly need to invest in a UX engineer, but are currently stuck scrambling for money as their corporate sponsorship ran out.
- andyjh 9y agoNo proxy support, so I can't use it in my corporate environment. https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop/issues/1632 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop/issues/1632 Also a bit annoying that it can't be run in the background, at least on Windows. https://whispersystems.discoursehosting.net/t/new-desktop-app-run-in-background/1368 https://whispersystems.discoursehosting.net/t/new-desktop-ap...
- tclover 9y agoyay another electron app
- kethinov 9y agoAnother Electron app, another thread full of people complaining about Electron. The solution is to build a common Electron runtime that all Electron apps can use. But it seems nobody is working on it despite all the complaints.[1] I really don't understand why there isn't anybody working it. If that got implemented, it would put a swift end to the biggest complaints about Electron. [1] https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673
- mynewtb 9y agoDo you mean a web browser?
- kethinov 9y agoThe web browser for UI drawing is only part of what Electron does. It also bundles Node.js and all its APIs, which web browsers don't ship. And Electron also provides APIs for native OS integration, e.g. native macOS menus and whatnot.
- pjmlp 9y agoHence web widgets on native UIs.
- muppetman 9y agoOh man I choked on my dinner laughing at this. That just frames it all up so well.
- LiquidFlux 9y agoI'm not familiar with Electron myself, however it's relatively easy to identify which applications are using it. I know Discord doesn't support using a keybind for push-to-talk whilst the (Chrome) tab is not in focus with their web application whilst their Electron app supports this. Something vital to PTT users whilst playing games.
- 9y ago
- captn3m0 9y agoPublished to AUR: - https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/signal-desktop-beta/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/signal-desktop-beta/ - https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/signal-desktop-bin/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/signal-desktop-bin/
- drudru11 9y agoHow does whisper system make money?
- 24gttghh 9y ago>As an Open Source project supported by grants and donations [...]There are no ads, no affiliate marketers[...] From the bottom of the main page on their website. I removed the marketing copy.
- asdojasdosadsa 9y agoA lot of people have given negative feedback(because of electron?). I for one, am happy for this. I am in the middle of migrating slowly to Mozilla Firefox from Google Chrome, and one of the hardest things, is to have some of the apps as standalone. I couldn't use my MacBook for anything else if I wanted to chat using signal (..and have chrome running in the background). Maybe that's just me, but it's good news!
- JshWright 9y agoIt's not "standalone" though... It's moving from being a Chrome extension to simply bundling an entire instance of Chromium that only it gets to use. So, you're migrating from Firefox to multiple instances of Chrome...
- StavrosK 9y agoI don't understand why it can't be served as a web app, like WhatsApp Web is :(
- davexunit 9y agoI can't tell from the page if the client can be run without using any nonfree software. Does anyone know? The Android application unfortunately requires nonfree components.
- JoeCoder_ 9y agoNo option to minimize to system tray? So I have to have a Signal App taking up room in my taskbar all the time.
- mtgx 9y agoI see that you still can't drag and drop an image on the new desktop app. It's not a huge issue but it's quite an inconvenience.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Igor_kh 9y agoGuys, have you heard about checksums? Do you really want me to download and install that bulky zip/exe on my laptop ?
- vipkhan 9y agowhat do you suggest they should they use instead