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Comment by throwaway946513 | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, Google has spent far too long creating and throwing away messaging applications. This is almost entirely their fault for not enabling an easily cross-platform method years ago.

I've made the switch to Signal, my girlfriend uses it on her iPhone to replace iMessage since I made the switch to Android last month. She can also use it on her Windows laptop unlike iMessage. My family members who are tech-y enough use Signal with me, and when they're not, I can still send standard SMS through the app. Signal even implements responses similar to iMessage 'likes' and 'hearts'. I don't think I could praise Signal enough for the great implementation they've built. Their crypto-enterprise this past year did make me feel a bit slighted, but as I don't use that feature, I can't comment on it.

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It almost seems like launching a messaging app is some sort of rite of passage for a certain kind of PM or engineer at Google.

I'm sure there will be more attempts to come.

Can I log into the same Signal account on two mobile devices yet? That’s the showstopper for me.

Not exactly mobile, they have an iPad app that'll let you login into the same account. But not available on Android tablets. Or on other phones, but clearly the technology is there.

Nope, and it is a completely artificial restriction. For example:

- iPhone + iPad? Supported.

- Android Phone + Android Tablet? Supported.

- iPhone + iPhone (no SIM card/no phone number)? Not supported.

- Android Phone + Android Phone (no SIM card)? Not supported.

This, according to them, because they want to simplify the setup experience. But in reality adding a bypass option to the onboarding process to provide the tablet setup experience would be trivial and should have happened three years ago.

You can add this to the "list" like no Gifs on PC even though the code exists for mobile clients, and they share a lot of source code already.

> - Android Phone + Android Tablet? Supported.

Unfortunately, I don't think even this is supported. The Android app can't seem to act as a secondary device in any configuration.

You can send SMS through the [Signal] app?! Been using it for a few weeks now but haven't figured this out. Or do you mean send SMS through the stock SMS app?

Aye, you can send SMS messages through the Signal app itself.

To do so, you have to go into your default apps, set the default messaging app to Signal (factory default is Messages for Pixel devices, likely whatever Samsung uses for Samsung devices). I just checked to see if there were any extra settings you have to enable in the Signal app, but it doesn't appear to be so. If a user uses both SMS or encrypted chat, you can long press the send button and decide between which it will use.

Do note, that any previous messages sent via SMS from other apps won't show up in Signal for message history. Likewise the same if/when you switch to another SMS app.

When I used this feature it made my battery life worse, just something to test if using.

I don't believe you can do this on iOS.

Aye, not on iOS, you can only use Apple's Messages as the default messenger for SMS.

Thanks for the tip about the long press, I had no idea - this will be useful for some contacts that have installed Signal some time ago but forgotten about it (and haven't deregistered their number!).

[android only]

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