Comment by HumblyTossed
2 years ago
I'm a huge fan of Signal, but I'm disappointed that this still means that I cannot have the same account on two phones (work and personal).
2 years ago
I'm a huge fan of Signal, but I'm disappointed that this still means that I cannot have the same account on two phones (work and personal).
Yeah, would like this too.
Whatsapp added this recently and it is very convenient. You can link a companion device in the same manner you sign into WhatsApp web.
A kind of hacky workaround (that I used to use for both signal, WhatsApp and others) is to set up a server with matrix bridges running and bridge your signal, WhatsApp etc. so then you can install the one matrix client on all your devices.
But as most apps do support multiple devices these days, bar signal, it doesn't feel like it's worth the effort. And I seem to remember the signal bridge in particular being a little buggy.
I'm sure it will become possible soon. The code is already there on iOS, as the app also work on iPad, but hidden behind the internal feature flag [0]. Same with Android [1]. If your second device in an Android, you can already use it now with [Molly](https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android).
Also, WhatsApp recently added this feature, so the expectations from potential new users who switched is now there.
[0] https://community.signalusers.org/t/allow-android-ios-device... [1] https://community.signalusers.org/t/allow-android-ios-device...
Would signing into Signal on a work device not negate most of the security benefits of using Signal? Genuine question; I am only vaguely familiar with Signal.
I'm not a CIA operative, so, I'm willing to take that risk.
You should be able to choose your own threat model.
You can. There's a plethora of e2e messaging apps out there all catering to different threat models.
5 replies →
No.
The interesting thing is that it is possible to share the account on multiple devices, as long as only one of those is a phone. You can sign in to and chat from that account just fine on the desktop app, even if your phone is off.
(I guess theoretically you could run something like PostmarketOS on a phone to run the desktop app, but you know what I mean.)
That's useful but not quite sufficient for this use case, though. The different devices currently have no way to sync chat history, so you'd lose all your old chats.
What I'd love to have is the ability to connect my phone and my laptop to the same Signal account, have them automatically sync chat history between each other, and then in the future if I add a new phone (e.g. because I've upgraded) my phone can sync from my laptop and get all of my message history.
My current work-around is just to use a group chat and have both work and personal accounts part of the chat. Fortunately, I only need to be able to chat with a few people (family) while off with the work phone so this isn't that big of a hassle, but it's something I wish I didn't have to do.
> as long as only one of those is a phone
Do you know why this limitation?
Unfortunately I don't. If I were to guess, I'd expect it's just a matter of the engineering hours that would need to be invested not being worth it at this time, given how few people they expect to need it.
Yeah, this is still my top requested feature. I have two phones, one is data only sim. I just want to be able to signal from both of them just like how I can on my mac and PC.