Signal

Signal is my go-to messaging app. I love that it is end-to-end encrypted and easy to use! The user-friendliness of the app made it easy to get my friends and family to get onto the app. It works really well for everything that I use it for. Plus, it’s open source.

We solely use this instant messaging app to manage our day to day operations. Signal allows us to instantly connect with our team members every day.

Works well but I can't migrate Windows installations to new computers and keep the messages. Even signalbackup-tools could't help.

Has the most compatibility

You want privacy? Use Signal. Not Telegram, not WhatsApp, not Matrix, not X or Y… Signal. It's simple: Signal is the only privacy first messaging app. Just to be clear: privacy first means everything else comes second. So yeah, there may be missing features compared to other apps, but at least you can be sure that there is just no way of accidentally leaking data, because features will just not be integrated if they somehow require giving up encryption.

But still, what about X and Y? I hear you say. You mean, some fork of Signal that's only been around for a few months? Or that's owned by a GAFAM company? Or hasn't been audited? Because that's what most of the alternatives are: forks of Signal with issues.

Not that Signal is completely free of issues, mind you. It's just overall better than everything else from a privacy standpoint. And it's so simple even my grandma can use it.

So, what are the issues?

• My biggest actual issue is that some phones tend to kill or hibernate Signal, which completely disables notifications until the user opens the app. A couple of friends have this issue, and it's the main reason why they're not using it. But it's got more to do with how some vendors use non-standard power management than with Signal itself.

• It still requires a phone number to login, at least the first time. Not sure how much of a problem this really is, though. You don't have to give your phone number to someone else for them to be able to contact you anymore, since they added

• It's still centralized. That may make it easier to take down, but that remains to be seen. Even countries that try to block it still don't seem to get on top of their censorship circumvention feature.

• There have been issues with how the database encryption key is stored on the desktop app, that could have been better handled by their team. It's been fixed.

Aside from that, most of the complaints I read about Signal are about some obscure issues with how the organization is managed, or some incidental bugs, or conspiratorial nonsense. And even when the issues are very real, they're still pretty much insignificant compared to the competition.