The latest Signal for iPhone release now includes multi-device support, allowing you to seamlessly move your private messaging experience from your iPhone to your desktop computer and back. Once you’ve linked a desktop client from within the Signal iPhone app, you can switch to the desktop at any time, whether your phone is online or not.
The Signal Desktop app also supports a new iOS theme, which is enabled by default whenever you link a desktop client from the Signal iPhone app. Try it out!
The latest Signal release for iPhone, Android, and Desktop now includes support for disappearing messages.
With this update, any conversation can be configured to delete sent and received messages after a specified interval. The configuration applies to all parties of a conversation, and the clock starts ticking for each recipient once they’ve read their copy of the message.
The latest Signal release for Android includes support for GIF search and browsing. Signal has long supported sending and receiving GIFs, but this is an experiment that allows users to browse, search, and select popular GIFs from within Signal.
The latest Signal release includes some changes to the way safety numbers work.
Safety numbers allow Signal users to verify the privacy of their communication with a contact, either by comparing a number or by scanning a single QR code. We recently introduced this new design as an update to Signal’s previous UX, which we felt was no longer adequate for what people had come to expect from Signal. Let’s look at the safety numbers design in more detail, then go over what’s new in this release.
The latest Signal for Android release includes support for adding doodles, stickers, and text to images.
This release also includes support for censorship circumvention in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
Today, The Guardian published a story falsely claiming that WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption contains a “backdoor.”
Today’s Signal release for Android and iOS includes beta support for video calls.
This represents an entirely new calling infrastructure for Signal, and should increase voice call quality as well. We think it’s a big improvement, but we’re rolling it out in stages to collect feedback from people with different devices, networks, and regions in order to ensure there are no surprises when it’s enabled for everyone by default.
To help us test on Android and iOS, toggle Signal Settings -> Advanced -> Video calling beta.
Only calls between Signal users who have both enabled the video calling beta will use the new calling system.
We recently released encrypted video calling as an opt-in beta. We’ve spent the past month collecting feedback and addressing the issues that the Signal community found in order to get it ready for production. Today’s Signal release for Android and iOS enables support for end-to-end encrypted video calls by default, which also greatly enhances the quality of Signal voice calls as well.
We think it’s a big improvement, and hope you will to.
The latest Signal beta includes some changes to the way safety numbers work. Back in November, we introduced experimental support for “advisory” safety number changes, with the objective of collecting feedback in order to eventually make this the default experience.
We’ve taken the feedback we’ve received over the past six months and incorporated it into a set of changes that we’re releasing into beta today.
The latest Signal beta for Android and iOS introduces support for Signal Profiles.
Profiles allow you to add a picture and display name that will be shown alongside your existing phone number when communicating with other users. Conversations will feel more personal. Group threads will be less confusing.
All of this is possible without sacrificing the privacy and security that you have come to expect from Signal.
At Signal, we’ve been thinking about the difficulty of private contact discovery for a long time. We’ve been working on strategies to improve our current design, and today we’ve published a new private contact discovery service.
Using this service, Signal clients will be able to efficiently and scalably determine whether the contacts in their address book are Signal users without revealing the contacts in their address book to the Signal service.
Today’s beta release of Signal for Android and iOS includes support for read receipts. This is an optional new feature that gives you the ability to see and share when messages have been read. Something tells us that you might find this useful…
Signal Desktop is now available in a new, standalone form, and the Chrome App has been deprecated.
Today’s Signal beta for iOS includes support for animated GIF search. Signal iOS has long supported sending and receiving GIFs, but today’s beta adds support for browsing and searching popular GIFs from within Signal.
We previously announced experimental support for animated GIF search in Signal Android, which we’re now bringing to iOS, along with some privacy updates to the process.
In collaboration with Signal, Microsoft is introducing a Private Conversations feature in Skype, powered by Signal Protocol.
Long before we knew that it would be called Signal, we knew what we wanted it to be. Instead of teaching the rest of the world cryptography, we wanted to see if we could develop cryptography that worked for the rest of the world. At the time, the industry consensus was largely that encryption and cryptography would remain unusable, but we started Signal with the idea that private communication could be simple.
Since then, we’ve made some progress. We’ve built a service used by millions, and software used by billions. The stories that make it back to us and keep us going are the stories of people discovering each other in moments where they found they could speak freely over Signal, of people falling in love over Signal, of people organizing ambitious plans over Signal. When we ask friends who at their workplace is on Signal and they respond “every C-level executive, and the kitchen staff.” When we receive a subpoena for user data and have nothing to send back but a blank sheet of paper. When we catch that glimpse of “Signal blue” on a metro commuter’s phone and smile.
Last week, we received the following email from Amazon:
From: [redacted], [redacted] <[redacted]@amazon.com>
Subject: Notification of potential account suspension regarding AWS Service Terms
Moxie,
Yesterday AWS became aware of your GitHub and Hacker News/ycombinator posts describing how Signal plans to make its traffic look like traffic from another site, (popularly known as “domain fronting”) by using a domain owned by Amazon -- Souq.com. You do not have permission from Amazon to use Souq.com for any purpose. Any use of Souq.com or any other domain to masquerade as another entity without express permission of the domain owner is in clear violation of the AWS Service Terms (Amazon CloudFront, Sec. 2.1: “You must own or have all necessary rights to use any domain name or SSL certificate that you use in conjunction with Amazon CloudFront”). It is also a violation of our Acceptable Use Policy by falsifying the origin of traffic and the unauthorized use of a domain.
We are happy for you to use AWS Services, but you must comply with our Service Terms. We will immediately suspend your use of CloudFront if you use third party domains without their permission to masquerade as that third party.
Thank you,
[redacted]
General Manager, Amazon CloudFront
In addition to the end-to-end encryption that protects every Signal message, the Signal service is designed to minimize the data that is retained about Signal users. By design, it does not store a record of your contacts, social graph, conversation list, location, user avatar, user profile name, group memberships, group titles, or group avatars.
We have been exploring techniques to further reduce the amount of information that is accessible to the service, and the latest beta release includes changes designed to move Signal incrementally closer to the goal of hiding another piece of metadata: who is messaging whom.
Like many others, we have been following the latest developments in Australia related to the “Assistance and Access” bill with a growing sense of frustration. The widespread adoption of strong cryptography and end-to-end encryption has given people around the world the ability to protect their personal information and communicate securely. Life is increasingly lived online, and the everyday actions of billions of people depend on this foundation remaining strong.
Attempting to roll back the clock on security improvements which have massively benefited Australia and the entire global community is a disappointing development.
The latest releases of Signal for Android, Desktop, and iOS are rolling out now with the ability to send optional link previews. This feature is built on the same foundation that has powered Signal’s animated GIF search for more than two years and that we have since expanded with additional privacy enhancements.
We’re launching link previews with initial support for Imgur, Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube. These are four of the most popular sites on the Internet and their heavy focus on visual content makes them a perfect fit for this feature. We don’t believe that privacy is about austerity, and now Signal users can see what’s behind the URL while sharing this content with their friends.
Signal 3.0 is now available in the App Store:
We would like to thank all of the alpha and beta users who helped us test and stabilize this release. If you want to get an early preview of new Signal features, you can join the beta community here.
Groups are inherently social, and Signal is a social app. Whether you’re planning a surprise party, discussing last night’s book club meeting, exchanging photos with your family, or organizing something important, group messaging has always been a key feature of Signal.
Signal provides private groups: the Signal service has no record of your group memberships, group titles, group avatars, or group attributes. We’ve been working on new private group technology that will enable group administrators and access control, improve group scalability, and set the stage for a much richer group experience – all while maintaining Signal’s unique group security and privacy properties. We’re moving into the future while keeping what we loved about the past.
They get slapped on street signs. We wear them on our clothes to identify ourselves to distant coworkers during awkward holiday parties. Some people create massive galleries on their laptops in overlapping levels stacked so deep that the hinges begin to lose their structural integrity and LCD screens struggle to remain upright. The digital versions are even more popular, and we get asked about them a lot.
Stickers are everywhere, and now they’re in Signal too. They’re a fun way to add a new layer of expression to your conversations – and just like every other Signal feature, they are also encrypted, private, and secure.
At Signal, we want to make privacy simple. From the beginning, we’ve designed Signal so that your information is in your hands rather than ours. Technologies like Signal Protocol secure your messages so that they are never visible by anyone but you and the intended recipients. Technologies like private contact discovery, private groups, and sealed sender mean that we don’t have a plaintext record of your contacts, social graph, profile name, location, group memberships, groups titles, group avatars, group attributes, or who is messaging whom. Plaintext databases have never been our style. We don’t want to build a system where you trust us with your data; we want to build a system where you don’t have to.
We’ve been working on new techniques based on secure enclaves and key splitting that are designed to enhance and expand general capabilities for private cloud storage. Our aim is to unlock new possibilities and new functionality within Signal which require cross-platform long-term durable state, while verifiably keeping this state inaccessible to everyone but the user who created it.
Today’s beta releases of Signal for Android and iOS include a new way to send individual photos and videos that are automatically removed from a conversation thread after they have been viewed.
Signal for Android now includes storage management functionality that helps visualize files across all of your conversations, sorted by size and type, in order to assist you in reducing the amount of space Signal uses on your device.
Registration Lock allows you to set a PIN that is required for account registration in addition to standard SMS-based verification. Today’s Signal beta release enhances the security of these PINs by transitioning them to use Secure Value Recovery.
When you’re standing next to a friend who says something funny, you can just laugh. You don’t need to pause and say “I found what you just said humorous” or quote their own words back to them before displaying a real-world emoji on your face. This feeling of immediacy and effortless response is what reactions are all about. They’re a quick way to share your take on any message, and you can try them today in the latest Signal beta.
We announced support for stickers in Signal less than two months ago. Since then, over five thousand sticker packs have been uploaded. Today we are officially adding two more: Hands and Faces by Swoon.
Over the past several weeks, Signal traffic has gone through the roof. New users are signing up at unprecedented rates, and we’ve expanded our server capacity faster than we ever anticipated.
It means a lot to us that so many people are relying on Signal during this difficult time. When users check in on their families, share moments of solace, smile with their friends, or discuss sensitive health issues with their doctors, Signal’s end-to-end encryption and privacy-preserving technology helps keep this information secure.
At a time when more people than ever are benefiting from these protections, the EARN IT bill proposed by the Senate Judiciary Committee threatens to put them at risk. COVID-19 has us sheltering in place, but we cannot quarantine our concerns.
At Signal, our goal is to build a reliable, secure, and private communication experience that is broadly accessible and simple to use. From the beginning, we’ve designed Signal so that your information is in your hands rather than ours.
Right now, people around the world are marching and protesting against racism and police brutality, outraged by the most recent police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. At Signal, we support the people who have gone into the streets to make their voices heard. We believe that something in America needs to change, and even if we don’t know exactly how, we support and trust in the people who are self-organizing around the country to figure it out.
Many of the people and groups who are organizing for that change are using Signal to communicate, and we’re working hard to keep up with the increased traffic. We’ve also been working to figure out additional ways we can support everyone in the street right now.
One immediate thing seems clear: 2020 is a pretty good year to cover your face.
In the midst of world-wide protests against racism and police brutality, a lot of people are becoming more immediately aware and concerned about the security of their data and online communication. We’ve gotten a lot of questions at Signal over the past week, so we wanted to briefly recap how it is that we’ve designed Signal, and how we think about concepts like privacy, security, and trust.
One immediate thing seems clear about 2020: it’s a good year to cover your face. Online, we’re working to scale and improve Signal for everyone that is relying on it, but as one small offline way to help support everyone self-organizing for change in the streets, we’re also distributing face coverings free of charge.
Signal iOS now includes a new feature that makes it possible to switch to a brand-new iPhone or iPad while securely transferring Signal information from your existing iOS device. As with every new Signal feature, the process is end-to-end encrypted and designed to protect your privacy. Transfers also occur over a local connection (similar to AirDrop), so even large migrations can be completed quickly.
The world was a different place when we announced message reactions back in February, but expressing the way you feel has never been more important. Instead of being limited to the default set of reactions that we started with, the latest Signal updates for Android, Desktop, and iOS let you react with even more emoji.
It’s been about two weeks since we announced an initiative to distribute versatile face coverings to help support everyone who is self-organizing for change in the streets. Since then, we’ve shipped over $25,000 worth of face coverings to organizers throughout the United States. Over $6,000 worth of merchandise was sent to Washington D.C. last week in time for the Juneteenth events in the heart of the city.
We continue to be inspired by the energy and enthusiasm that is helping to shape change in America, and many people have reached out and asked how they can help. In order to make it as easy as possible, we’re opening up a separate donation space to continue funding these efforts.
Sometimes people dive into Signal’s code looking for domain names, and then they send us screenshots asking if they should be concerned:
We reply with a short explanation that lays out why there’s nothing wrong, but we understand the confusion. Nobody would be excited about getting a grade like this on a homework assignment – and you’d have to stay after class and ask the teacher what the hell a “T” even means on your report about summer vacation (“T”oo cool for school?).
Let’s take a deeper look at what’s going on.
The number of people who join Signal every day is still growing at a record pace. With so many new conversations getting started, we’ve heard from a lot of users that they’d like more control over how they begin.
With message requests, when someone who isn’t in your contacts starts a new chat with you or adds you to a group, you can quickly see more info before accepting the request, deleting it, or blocking the conversation.
Update: This feature is now available in production.
The latest beta release of Signal Desktop includes preliminary support for one-to-one voice and video calls. Call your friends and family on macOS, Windows, and Linux; see their smiles on a larger screen; hear their laughter through the big speakers on your desk; and help us test the next generation of calling on Signal.
Beta users get an early chance to evaluate call quality and performance while we continue to improve the interface and work on upcoming features.
Whether it’s staying in touch with family and friends, planning a party, scheduling an event, getting work done, or organizing for change, group chats are an increasingly important part of Signal. Today we’re releasing a new version of Signal groups that gives you a richer private group experience with group admins, granular permissions, @mentions and more. If you’re excited to try out these features now, you can create a new group to do so. These features will be coming soon to your existing Signal groups in a future update.
Signal groups are built on top of the new private group system technology we previewed last year, which gives you a modern group chat experience while keeping your groups private: the Signal service has no access to your group memberships, group titles, group avatars, or group attributes.
Now that voice and video calls are available for everyone on Signal Desktop and iPad, in addition to our mobile clients, we want to share a closer look at the technology that makes it possible for incoming calls to ring across multiple devices. Every call placed on Signal has always been private and end-to-end encrypted, but we previously supported only calls to or from one primary device per person. Now, you can make and receive secure audio and video calls from the devices in your pocket, on your lap, or at your desk.
Signal has always benefitted from our engaged and supportive community, and wouldn’t be what it is without your input and feedback. As the number of people using Signal has grown, so have our efforts to keep pace with what people expect from a messaging app, and where we might find new opportunities for Signal.
Software companies typically overflow with data that explains the past and forecasts possible futures. They know exactly who is doing what with their products, how often, and where. While an abundance of data can contribute to their product and user experience decisions, these data collection practices are often rife with overreach and abuse. Signal doesn’t track you, collect your data, or measure which features you use. Anything and everything you do with Signal is your business. Which means that for us to dial in the features and experiences you expect calls for a respectful practice of research.
We recently released a new version of Signal groups with group admins, @mentions, permissions, and more. Today we’re adding one more feature into the mix: group links, which let you quickly create a link that anyone can follow to join your group. Like our other new group features, you can create a new group to try it out now, but these features will be coming soon to your existing Signal groups.
2020 has seen its fair number of challenges and changes. We’ve all adapted to new ways of staying in touch, getting work done, celebrating birthdays and weddings, and even exercising. As more and more of our critical and personal moments move online, we want to continue to provide you with new ways to share and connect privately.
Today, we’re launching group calls in Signal with the latest versions of our apps. Group calls are free, private, and end-to-end encrypted — like everything else on Signal.
Yesterday, the BBC ran a story with the factually untrue headline, “Cellebrite claimed to have cracked chat app’s encryption.” This is false. Not only can Cellebrite not break Signal encryption, but Cellebrite never even claimed to be able to.
Since we weren’t actually given the opportunity to comment in that story, we’re posting this to help to clarify things for anyone who may have seen the headline.
Just over a week ago, we announced that Iranian censors had started blocking all Signal traffic in the country. As an interim solution to help people in Iran get connected again, we’ve added support in Signal for a simple TLS proxy that is easy to set up, can be used to bypass the network block, and will securely route traffic to the Signal service.
This new connection method is supported in the latest Signal Android beta release, and will be rolling out to production users in a few days. Our hope is that this will help many people in Iran start sending and receiving messages again while we continue to explore additional censorship circumvention techniques that will work there.
The latest Signal betas are rolling out today. Inside, you’ll find performance enhancements, a slew of bug fixes, improvements to the mute settings, and if you’re in the United Kingdom, you’ll see support for Signal Payments – a new feature that enables you to send and receive privacy focused payments as easily as sending or receiving a message. This is a beta feature in a beta build, but for those in the United Kingdom living life on the edge, please help us test and give feedback.
As the world stands today, the future of transaction privacy does not look great. The existing landscape is dominated by traditional credit companies, who over the past decade have been steadily pushing their networks for increased access to user data. They (and their data customers) are on a track to getting SKU level data of every purchase everyone makes everywhere. There are other contenders, such as regional online payments networks (like Venmo in the US), but the data story there is similar.
This is not a future we are particularly excited about. At Signal, we want to help build a different kind of tech – where software is built for you rather than for your data – so these are trends that we watch warily.
