I stopped recommending Signal to nontechnical folks due to the inability to back up messages on iOS. People are pretty protective of their message history, and having everything tied to a single device with no recourse for backups is a nonstarter.

The slightly longer version of the story is that my wife, travelling alone, had some trouble with an iPhone update (it hung for hours), and so she took it to the nearest Genius Bar; they eventually got the update to apply, but then did a factory reset “just to be safe”. Of course, everything except her Signal message history was restored from the automatic iCloud backups. She was devastated, and refuses to touch it now.

Please do not reply to say this was the fault of the Apple Store employee. It was, but at the same time, it also very much wasn't.

> So the size of it just grows and grows and grows until it's using all the space on your phone. Not a good fit for non-technical types.

To be fair I've met plenty of non-techie types whose phones were "full" of stuff from WhatsApp or photos that had already been backed up, because the idea they could clear their local storage would never cross their minds. I've seen people buy new phones instead of clearing their cache.

Signal does other things which annoy me to the point I can't consider it as a viable option for me, my family and close friends. For a start, it wants a full access to contacts and if doesn't get it it pops internal notification about it - but that one is easily dismissible. But then, I keep a strict notification settings on all my devices and Signal doesn't like that and wants me to turn these on. Perhaps because they can't otherwise push notifications about donation - which also appears within the app.

People behind Signal have a very corporate approach to their app where a permanent "no" doesn't exist when it comes to user choice - all what you have is "not now".

Then there's linking devices; it's not permanent but temporary and devices are removed automatically after 30 days. You can't even log into your account with tablet any more - that was replaced with linking. Cross-platform synchronization - didn't work for me at all despite being a loudly announced success.

It's very frustrating, I admit. Backups and archival are indeed a pet peeve of mine, as are the frequent redesigns (but that's just a "feature" virtually every single god-damn modern app).

What is the alternative though? A private chat app, mobile + desktop, syncing, with enough ease of setup and use for normies to adopt? I don't see it.