Show HN: Signal-Android – A fork of Signal that provides SMS support

65 points

3 years ago

Signal was a brilliant app. It can send messages with rich media, host group chats, and even do voice and video calls, all with the peace of mind that comes from a proper secure messaging app. The best part was that you could still send messages to people who don't use Signal. Signal was the messaging app everyone wants - all the benefits of iMessage, without being siloed in one particular ecosystem.

Sometime leading up to October of 2022, the folks at the Signal foundation lost the plot. Signal has since dropped support for SMS, and is inexplicably adding "stories" to their personal messaging app. I despise this.

Instead of just complaining about it, I decided to do something about it. Here is a link to a version of the Signal Android app that still supports SMS, and doesn't have stories. There also isn't a stupid, nagging banner telling you to update. Right now, it's just Signal 5.38 with a couple lines commented out, but I plan to integrate any upstream security/UX improvements in the near future. For now, you'll have to build/install it yourself, but I will eventually put an APK out there for people to download. Enjoy!

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