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signalapp
Signal-Android
Kotlin2011–2026
signalapp / Signal-Android

Signal-Android

A private messenger for Android.

Security & PrivacyMobile & DesktopCommunication & Social
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
280Distinct people
372Mentions
5Explicit recommenders
29.6KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A private messenger for Android.

GitHub

Where it is used

  • Molly — Molly uses the signalapp/signal-android codebase as an independent fork to deliver a variant of the Signal Android app with added features. It ships as its own app built from the Signal Android project. Source

What people are saying

I never hated on Signal, on the contrary I recommend it too many people but I can say that the energy consumption on Android is in many cases abysmal for multiple years now and…

johschmitz used a recommendation phrase. 5 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 4:00:59 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year372 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2011-12-21 12:48:31 UTC to 2026-10-12 11:10:46 UTC.

0204060802011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments20112012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 0 submissions, 12 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 23 mentions; 0 submissions, 23 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 26 mentions; 1 submissions, 25 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 46 mentions; 1 submissions, 45 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 22 mentions; 2 submissions, 20 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 24 mentions; 4 submissions, 20 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 1 submissions, 9 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 25 mentions; 1 submissions, 24 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 87 mentions; 12 submissions, 75 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 30 mentions; 2 submissions, 28 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 13 mentions; 0 submissions, 13 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 16 mentions; 2 submissions, 14 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 23 mentions; 1 submissions, 22 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 0 submissions, 10 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20112011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC12012
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC23023
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC26125
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC46145
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC22220
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC24420
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1019
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC25124
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC871275
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC30228
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC13013
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC16214
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC23122
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC10010

What Hacker News says

23 sources
morsch·Nov 18, 2014
OTR with Pidgin was pretty solid when I used it (I don't, anymore). But OTR doesn't deal well with mobile connections, something that the changes Text Secure introduces to the protocol address. I still have had occasional, non-reproducible hiccups with Text Secure. AFAIK Text Secure only falls back to SMS if there's no data available, and they're considering removing SMS support entirely in an upcoming version ([0], I say good riddance). I don't know how well, if at all, either of them deal with multiple simultaneous logins. XMPP (Jabber) doesn't have a great answer for it (ie. there may be support in the protocol or a protocol extension, but implementation support is terrible). Which is a shame because it's very desirable from a user perspective; both just being able to receive incoming messages on multiple devices as well as the next le
Read the rest
vel of synchronising message session history across devices. Clearly the latter is way easier if you're willing to store the history on the server. [0] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/issues/1737 also on HN somewhere
In Open Whisper Systems partners with WhatsApp to provide end-to-end encryption
charlieok·Nov 18, 2014
huh, it worked for me just a minute ago. Wonder if they just took it down? (edit: looks like it's back up now) Here's the text of the page I got: At Open Whisper Systems, our goal is to make private communication simple. For the past three years, we’ve been developing a modern, open source, strong encryption protocol [1] for asynchronous messaging systems, designed to make seamless end-to-end encrypted messaging possible. Today we’re excited to publicly announce a partnership with WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app in the world, to incorporate the TextSecure protocol into their clients and provide end-to-end encryption for their users by default. Your messages may already be encrypted The most recent WhatsApp Android client release includes support for the TextSecure encryption protocol, and billions of encrypted messages are being
Read the rest
exchanged daily. The WhatsApp Android client does not yet support encrypted messaging for group chat or media messages, but we’ll be rolling out support for those next, in addition to support for more client platforms. We’ll also be surfacing options for key verification in clients as the protocol integrations are completed. WhatsApp runs on an incredible number of mobile platforms, so full deployment will be an incremental process as we add TextSecure protocol support into each WhatsApp client platform. We have a ways to go until all mobile platforms are fully supported, but we are moving quickly towards a world where all WhatsApp users will get end-to-end encryption by default. This is still the beginning We’re continuing to develop the TextSecure app [2], and our roadmap for our own products remains unchanged. We’ve been working with WhatsApp for the past half year, and have learned a lot through the process of deploying the TextSecure protocol at the scale of hundreds of millions of users. We’re excited to incorporate what we’ve learned from this integration into our future design decisions, and to bring this experience to bear on integrations that we do with other companies and products in the future. We believe that by continuing to advance the state of the art for frictionless private communication with open source software, open protocols, and simple libraries, we’ll have additional opportunities to support mass adoption of end-to-end encryption. WhatsApp deserves enormous praise for devoting considerable time and effort to this project. Even though we’re still at the beginning of the rollout, we believe this already represents the largest deployment of end-to-end encrypted communication in history. Brian Acton and the WhatsApp engineering team has been amazing to work with. Their devotion to the project as well as their thoroughness in getting this done are inspiring in a world where so many other companies are focused on surveillance instead of privacy. Get involved! If you’d like to participate in Open Whisper Systems, there are still a few more days to apply to Winter Of Code [3], our retreat in Hawaii this January. Or check out our Android [4], iOS [5], and browser [6] clients on GitHub to join in on development. If you’d like to donate to Open Whisper Systems, we accept Bitcoin donations [7] that are automatically paid out to each merged PR via BitHub [8]. You can also make tax-deductible donations by credit card through the Freedom Of The Press Foundation here [9]. Links: [1] https://whispersystems.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting/ [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms [3] https://whispersystems.org/blog/winter-of-code/ [4] https://github.com/whispersystems/textsecure [5] https://github.com/whispersystems/signal-ios [6] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Browser/ [7] http://bithub.whispersystems.org/ [8] https://whispersystems.org/blog/bithub/ [9] https://freedom.press/bundle/encryption-tools-journalists
In Open Whisper Systems partners with WhatsApp to provide end-to-end encryption
616c·Jul 21, 2014
The F-Droid thing will certainly will not happen. Moxie, one of the core developers of the WhispherCore products, had a pretty argumentative debate on their forum and his own Github issues regarding their repackging of his software TextSecure. It was subsequently removed, due to his indirect request (he went so far as to say he did not approve, but did not directly instruct them to do so). Despite their workflow and licensing, he believed it to be a step backwards in security as he takes issue with phone rooting and other things (if I recall correctly). Long story short, it is a safe guess you will not see any WhisperCore products on F-Droid anytime soon. Moxie et al. say compile and patch yourself, or use the Play Store (for the faint of heart). One reference here: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/issues/281#issu... UPDATE
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: Maybe I missed something entirely as you mentioned your obvious knowledge of the F-Droid spat. Will leave it here for others though. Clumsy reading on my part, sorry.
In Flock, Private Contact and Calendar Cloud Sync for Android
garrettgrimsley·May 2, 2014
With open source projects there is often a page of feature requests that anyone can contribute to. [0, 1] The problem is that often these are buried deep in a website, and the user has to dig through to find it. The up-side to this is that project maintainers are not buried in a dearth of feature requests. Though for popular projects I don't think it would be hard to find someone to volunteer to sort through the requests acting as a filter or curator. What if you could put bounties on specific accepted feature requests, like a targeted, more user-friendly BitHub?[2] You could even offer small bounties for submitting a feature request that is accepted and implemented. I think that this would be reasonable because the "idea person" is adding some value to the product. [0] http://dev.deluge-torrent.org/wiki/Development/PluginIdeas [1] https:
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//github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/issues?labels=f... [2] http://bithub.com/earnpoints
In What Programming is Like
illumen·Apr 3, 2014
"I just reviewed all open and closed bugs in TextSecure's Issues page and didn't see a single crypto protocol bug. Admittedly, I looked quickly and casually. Could you point us to one?" You could not have reviewed all open and closed bugs in 8 minutes ;) Issue 1073: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/issues/1073 Another one: Just sent an encrypted photo to someone? The photo is stored unencrypted on your phone. Edit: group messages were also sent unencrypted, but this was fixed. https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/issues/32 Edit2: ok, I see your point. Maybe they do crypto well as you say, but they don't seem to do software engineering well, or UI design for secure text messaging well. Sending messages unencrypted, and leaving messages unencrypted on the phone is a big fail in overall security of the app. It's me
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ant to encrypt things, and it doesn't. That it doesn't put in tests for these things, and that it did not publish the independent security audit should cause everyone to reconsider using the TextSecure app for its stated purpose.
In CryptoCat iOS Application Penetration Test [pdf]
glogla·Apr 2, 2014
I also doesn't exist on non-gooogle play devices, because the author thinks that getting software from somewhere else than walled garden is "repeating the desktop mistake all over again" [1] There might be iOS version, but there very likely never will be web version, or FxOS version or desktop version or anything like that. Which is really sad, because unlike Telegram authors, TextSecure's author is very good with crypto. [1]: it's a long read: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/issues/127
In Breaking Half of the Telegram Contest
jmillikin·Mar 21, 2014
> if a decent looking/working e-mail client with end > to end encryption appears this year, I'll move to it > almost immediately. Thunderbird and GPG work with Gmail today. > So if Google wants to keep me as a Gmail users, > they'd better enable the DarkMail protocol [1] > or something similar in their e-mail client. Gmail doesn't have a desktop email client. If encryption were added to the Android clients, then the web interface would become useless and the whole point of Gmail (being a web-based email system) would be moot. > As soon as TextSecure is fully cross-platform, > I'm switching completely to it. The TextSecure wiki[1][2] describes a fairly wonky encryption protocol involving two shared symmetric keys instead of using public key encryption, so I have little confidence in their system's ability to withstand anal
Read the rest
ysis by state-level actors. You're better off using GPG and email. [1] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/wiki/Protocol [2] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/wiki/Using-Text...
In About that time Google spied on my Gmail

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