I’ve used Signal for quite some time but few of my contacts do. It seems that there are privacy issues that make it impossible for the desktop app to simply scoop all your phone contacts This means that the desktop app is virtually useless, which I suspect puts many people off switching.
What does the "Import all Signal groups and contacts from your mobile device" button do, then?
Obviously it only imports contacts who have Signal, but there wouldn't be any point in the desktop application having the details of those who didn't.
I know Signal is somewhat pointless unless both parties are using it, but I quite like it as an app so I have it set as my default regardless, even though most of my texts are sent to people that don’t have it. It would be convenient to be able to do the same with the desktop app, given that the app itself can access your contacts on the phone. Why can’t it do the same for the desktop?
Ah, I looked this up to see if it could function as a replacement for MySMS. It appears to be a deliberate decision not to go to lots of effort to provide functionality that goes against their privacy-first philosophy. I'm not sure I agree with that, because making it more convenient for people to use Signal would surely be a good thing, but I sympathise with not wanting to put effort into developing the phone-as-SMS-gateway function.
I'd rather they put the effort into an Android/IOS version of the desktop app (as it were), so you can use the same account as your phone from your fondleslab.
But only after they allow for video calls in landscape mode. FFS, why is that not a thing?