Preston Maness ☭<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://scholar.social/@gedankenstuecke" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>gedankenstuecke</span></a></span> <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.world/@signalapp" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>signalapp</span></a></span> Hmm... Apparently, switching between iOS and Android is not supported? Like, at all?</p><p><a href="https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Backup-and-Restore-Messages" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">support.signal.org/hc/en-us/ar</span><span class="invisible">ticles/360007059752-Backup-and-Restore-Messages</span></a></p><p>>Message restoration or account transfers are not currently supported, if you:<br>><br>> * do not have your old device or lost your phone.<br>> * wiped or cleared your phone.<br>> * uninstalled Signal on your iPhone or iPad.<br>> * accidentally deleted a message or chat.<br>> * switched between Android and iOS.<br>> * changed your number.<br>> * have a linked iPad or Desktop.</p><p>Waaaa?? Surely that's not right. Why on Earth would the backups be tied to the OS? Backups are app-level, data-level concerns. But indeed, there seems to be no way to get Signal on iOS to generate a "*.backup" file, like you can on Android.</p><p><a href="https://community.signalusers.org/t/ios-backups-keeping-message-history-when-resetting-phone/1736/337" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">community.signalusers.org/t/io</span><span class="invisible">s-backups-keeping-message-history-when-resetting-phone/1736/337</span></a></p><p>>It is highly unlikely we will ever build a file based backup system for iOS. In addition to it being an unfamiliar experience for iOS users, part of our decision making to not build such a system for iOS was based on how much of a nightmare supporting such a system has been for the Android team, both technically making sure it continues to work with any backup file from any version as well as via our support channels where user’s just don’t understand at all how it works. The future for moving your data between devices in Signal likely looks like a choice between direct peer-to-peer transfer or restoration from some form of secure network storage.</p><p>Absolutely bonkers. "iOS users don't know what files are." Be so for real, y'all. And "version-tolerant data migration is hard" may be true. But y'all are the best-of-the-best, right? Y'all have tens of millions of dollars at your disposal every year, right? Forcing "Direct peer-to-peer transfer" so you can force equal versioning between the devices, and side-step that problem, is lazy. And "some form of secure network storage?" That's still "just a file," only abstracted away.</p><p>If nothing else, I suppose you *could* enable Signal Desktop from iOS, allow it to Sync, and then... you'd at least have some record of the data on your Desktop. Though I don't think you can "reverse sync" from the Desktop to, say, your new install on GrapheneOS.</p><p>What a mess.</p><p><a href="https://tenforward.social/tags/signal" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>signal</span></a> <a href="https://tenforward.social/tags/SignalMessenger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SignalMessenger</span></a></p>