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Great, but... Please let people allow Signal to automatically save their media to their photo roll (or whatever ios calls it). The number of people I have met

by noja 5y ago

Great, but... Please let people allow Signal to automatically save their media to their photo roll (or whatever ios calls it). The number of people I have met who require this and left Signal _after starting to use it_ is astonishing.

dewey 5y ago
Do you think that's really the reason they are abandoning it? I think the bigger issue is probably that most of their friends are not on there and they use it less frequently until they abandon it.
- noja 5y ago
  They abandoned it for two reasons: the reason above (automatic saving of family photos doesn't exist), and notifications not showing up.
csydas 5y ago
This surprises me greatly, as it's my biggest annoyance with WhatsApp and Google Hangouts or whatever they call it now (I've not yet accepted the new app, so it still calls itself hangouts, but clearly is using the new chat app backend...) I despise that it shows up in my main photos whenever someone sends a photo/gif/vid on these apps. Telegram segregates its local storage to a separate folder that Android doesn't seem to grab for the photo-roll and I want it this way; my photoroll should only be __my__ pictures, not random stuff my friends send me. I talk to different people on different apps in very different ways; the ways I joke with my best friends is absolutely not appropriate for the ways I talk with the older people in my life, and vice versa. And it's absolutely not about me testing these waters; that's not for an App/OS to decide, that's for me to decide, and mixing these photos into one central location makes it more annoying and precarious for me to accidentally tap and share something I never meant to because the App/OS saved it to a central location that it never should have. I don't even agree with "give people the option"; photocell/gallery/whatever are for __my pictures__. Downloads are for just that; Downloads. Apps should stay away from the pre-defined user space and put it in correctly named locations. I realize I'm "reeeeee-ing" here, but it's honestly a huge pet peeve of mine to see all the photos from the chat apps I use to keep in touch with a small handful of people dump themselves into a user space that isn't theirs. Telegram does it right, and apparently Signal does too -- I cannot understand why other chat-apps feel the need to behave otherwise; finding said photos is a matter of a single system call, so it's not like discoverability is a challenge for them. The users __will learn__, it's not hard to summon the file manager even with locked down permissions.
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  For WhatsApp it is just settings->chats->save to camera roll which doesn’t feel like a huge burden. I think the way I think about it is that your phone's ‘photos’ app should have all the things you would think of as photos and things people sent you are included in that. Though I’m not sure what iMessage does (I think they don’t show up in photos. At least, things you take don’t show up). I also wish the app were better at differentiating between photos you took and photos that WhatsApp added, e.g. I once found a video of my feet walking through the snow in flip flops and I couldn’t remember where I was or why I did it, until I had worked out that it was my brother’s feet and came from WhatsApp. It would be nice to have some source metadata[1] and maybe a deep link back to WhatsApp, or at least have the app say “this is in the WhatsApp album by the way” [1] ok, this actually exists for more recent photos and started exactly when I last upgraded my phone. So I am somewhat happy there I guess.
kemayo 5y ago
I mean, I'm not opposed to this feature existing, but I always thought it was one of WhatsApp's weirder choices as a default behavior. I certainly turn it off the moment I set up WhatsApp on any device -- why would I want random memes mixed into my photos?
diebeforei485 5y ago
I think if people want this, it could be opt-in. But I have issues with the wisdom of such a feature, given that we're entering the age of client-side CSAM scanning.

by noja 5y ago

dewey 5y ago

Do you think that's really the reason they are abandoning it? I think the bigger issue is probably that most of their friends are not on there and they use it less frequently until they abandon it.

noja 5y ago
They abandoned it for two reasons: the reason above (automatic saving of family photos doesn't exist), and notifications not showing up.

csydas 5y ago

This surprises me greatly, as it's my biggest annoyance with WhatsApp and Google Hangouts or whatever they call it now (I've not yet accepted the new app, so it still calls itself hangouts, but clearly is using the new chat app backend...) I despise that it shows up in my main photos whenever someone sends a photo/gif/vid on these apps. Telegram segregates its local storage to a separate folder that Android doesn't seem to grab for the photo-roll and I want it this way; my photoroll should only be __my__ pictures, not random stuff my friends send me. I talk to different people on different apps in very different ways; the ways I joke with my best friends is absolutely not appropriate for the ways I talk with the older people in my life, and vice versa. And it's absolutely not about me testing these waters; that's not for an App/OS to decide, that's for me to decide, and mixing these photos into one central location makes it more annoying and precarious for me to accidentally tap and share something I never meant to because the App/OS saved it to a central location that it never should have. I don't even agree with "give people the option"; photocell/gallery/whatever are for __my pictures__. Downloads are for just that; Downloads. Apps should stay away from the pre-defined user space and put it in correctly named locations. I realize I'm "reeeeee-ing" here, but it's honestly a huge pet peeve of mine to see all the photos from the chat apps I use to keep in touch with a small handful of people dump themselves into a user space that isn't theirs. Telegram does it right, and apparently Signal does too -- I cannot understand why other chat-apps feel the need to behave otherwise; finding said photos is a matter of a single system call, so it's not like discoverability is a challenge for them. The users __will learn__, it's not hard to summon the file manager even with locked down permissions.

dan-robertson 5y ago
For WhatsApp it is just settings->chats->save to camera roll which doesn’t feel like a huge burden. I think the way I think about it is that your phone's ‘photos’ app should have all the things you would think of as photos and things people sent you are included in that. Though I’m not sure what iMessage does (I think they don’t show up in photos. At least, things you take don’t show up). I also wish the app were better at differentiating between photos you took and photos that WhatsApp added, e.g. I once found a video of my feet walking through the snow in flip flops and I couldn’t remember where I was or why I did it, until I had worked out that it was my brother’s feet and came from WhatsApp. It would be nice to have some source metadata[1] and maybe a deep link back to WhatsApp, or at least have the app say “this is in the WhatsApp album by the way” [1] ok, this actually exists for more recent photos and started exactly when I last upgraded my phone. So I am somewhat happy there I guess.

kemayo 5y ago

I mean, I'm not opposed to this feature existing, but I always thought it was one of WhatsApp's weirder choices as a default behavior. I certainly turn it off the moment I set up WhatsApp on any device -- why would I want random memes mixed into my photos?

diebeforei485 5y ago

I think if people want this, it could be opt-in. But I have issues with the wisdom of such a feature, given that we're entering the age of client-side CSAM scanning.