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by toastal7 hours ago |
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upvoteby drnick17 hours ago|
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The Signal desktop app works fine, but you are right, it is still tied to a mobile account and a phone number. This is the main downside to Signal. I read that the Molly fork will support multiple accounts and a self hostable server. It probably won't be federated, but that is not really a problem when you can use multiple accounts and avoids a lot of headaches that come with federation.
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upvoteby simgoh7 hours ago|
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> but doesn’t integrate or perform great.

Curious what you mean by this. I use the Signal Desktop app. It does what it's supposed to - send and receive messages in a timely way with no lag.

What poor performance are you seeing? What doesn't integrate?

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upvoteby foresto6 hours ago|
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I haven't used Signal desktop, but I find Electron apps in general to be very wasteful of system resources. Out of curiosity, I once compared an Electron-based chat app to a C++ alternative, and found that the former used about 25 times the RAM and generated more CPU load.

If GP's system resources are usually dedicated to other tasks, perhaps trying to run an Electron app on top of those led to resource contention, and poor performance. You wouldn't notice this if your hardware is overprovisioned for the things you do with it.

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upvoteby fsflover4 hours ago|
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Can I use it without iOS and Android though?
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upvoteby simgoh3 hours ago|
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No[1], but that wasn't what I was trying to get clarification on, or disputing for that matter.

1 - https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360008216551-In...

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upvoteby DaSHacka6 hours ago|
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Not GP but I've also had issues with the Signal Desktop app (installed from the Arch repos).

Its overall a little sluggish in general (like most Electron apps though, in fairness) and occasionally clicking and dragging images onto the application will cause it to freeze and eventually crash.

Plus, the general usability issues present in all variants of the signal client (like no easy way of restoring previous messages on a new device).

It's not terrible or anything, but it's just a solid 6/10 application. I personally wish they were more open to 3rd party clients, so I could have something that integrates with my desktop environment a little better and is snappier, like my Matrix clients.

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upvoteby simgoh3 hours ago|
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I'll have to try clicking and dragging images onto the Signal application and see if I notice any difference. I usually actually click the button to add an attachment and then browse to it. I'm also on Win11 but I would hope the experience between OSs wouldn't be too drastically different.
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upvoteby jandrese3 hours ago|
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The other downside of the Desktop is that it requires periodic re-verification with the device you used to set it up. Desktop users are definitely second class citizens in the Signal ecosystem.
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