Best Whatsapp alternative? (Help needed!)

Applications
#61

No, it shouldn’t. Haven’t tried on my own but I am very certain this is how Signal is designed: Messages you’ve received on your phone won’t be available on your desktop app unless you have an internet connection on your phone. So linking a device with your account somehow (I’d have to research as well ) exchanges necessary decryption keys to read the messages. But since no content is stored on the servers, any messages not received directly on the linked device currently in use need to be downloaded from the device they originally were received on - be it your phone or yet another desktop client.

There’s been an article on a German tech site comparing sync behavior of Signal and Telegram (which I can’t find atm).
They noticed that for the case of Signal taking the phone into flight mode, no old messages appeared on a freshly linked desktop client.
While for Telegram all messages were easily accessible to the desktop despite having the phone disconnected from the net.

#62

Yes, it should, and it does. I don’t know why I keep having to repeat it, because in reply to the post you quoted, I already said “Up until a couple of weeks ago, I hadn’t even used Whisperfish for years , only Signal Desktop.” Whisperfish has never had a daemon and my phone is rarely connected to the internet anyway. You do not need to keep your phone online to use Signal Desktop, so please don’t make statements like “No, it shouldn’t” and “I am very certain this is how Signal is designed” when you aren’t actually certain and that’s not the way Signal is designed.

Once the initial link is established, Signal Desktop is able to function independently from Signal Android/iOS forever. Messages are stored on the servers until the device comes back online - otherwise how would you be able to get the messages that were sent whilst your phone was offline? Signal is not a distributed p2p network, it relies on servers to account for offline recipients.

Whatever the article said, you misunderstood:

  • The way you think Signal works, is the way Whatsapp works - it establishes a connection to the phone that basically just shows you the contents of Whatsapp on your phone. If the connection is lost, it can’t show you anything.
  • Signal encrypts to each of your and your contact’s devices, but because it uses forward secrecy, the only messages you will receive on a newly added device are the messages that have been sent to you after you added that device. Once a device is added, it will receive all messages regardless of whether any of your other devices are online, and you need to remove the device for it to stop receiving new messages.
  • Telegram, on the other hand, doesn’t encrypt anything, and lets you access your entire message history from any new device you log in to Telegram with.
1 Like
#63

Ok, thanks for explaining again, then. I’ll have to reread the article.
Got a good link for digging a bit deeper into the server-client design design? Apart from the source code, I mean.

#64

You can install Fernschreiber from the Jolla store for Telegram and Whisperfish from open repos for Signal…although if you have upgraded to 4 right now you may want to use the android app for Signal as there are certain incompatibilities.

#65

FWIW, I just released alpha.8 to get most to work again on 4.0. Still some rough edges, but usable again.

6 Likes
#66

Since the update to SOFS 4.0.1.48 my contacts are shown in Signal 5.3.12.

#67

How does it work? Do you have a special setup? I have microG and it does not find google services…

#68

I haven’t installed microG and haven’t done any special. Recently I updated Signal client via Aurora store. Yesterday I updraded to SFOS 4.0.1.48. Last night I pressed the button with the pencil to create a new conversation, entered different names int to search field and realised that if I open some of my contacts show as unencrypted and others show as ‘normal’ Signal contacts. Than I realised that my contact list in Signal is filled, first you have the contacts that use signal, grouped by names with the first Letter as the group shown in blue and the Name of each contact in black. The font groups letters and contact names of unregistered users use gray colour.

#69

It does not work for me :frowning:

#70

where in the map road is the audio messages @rubdos?

#71

I just noticed your reply on the Signal voice message bug, is this about sending a voice message or receiving one? Receiving should more or less work in WF, the former has not been written down as an issue yet. I’ll do that now.

EDIT: https://gitlab.com/rubdos/whisperfish/-/issues/252
EDIT2: Please vote on issues on Gitlab that affect you!

#72

The issue with signal app in Koli is that sounds while sending an audio, it records it and sounds like a robot. It might be a problem with Koli, cause i use 3.4 without any problem.