Molly: An Improved Signal App

https://molly.im/

by dtj1123 • 8 months ago

413 256 8 months ago

molly.im

worik• 8 months ago

What are the advantages of this?

Mindless2112• 8 months ago

It supports linking two Android devices.

cowmix• 8 months ago

This is huge. There's been 3rd party Signal library for this for years -- and for some reason I can't determine, the developers have opted NOT to do this.

patchtopic• 8 months ago

this is why molly.im was a lifesaver for me.. trying to move a family member from VIBER to SIGNAL and ran into the annoying roadblock of not being able to link an Android tablet to an Android phone like Viber can - but molly does it fine.

ahazred8ta3• 8 months ago

If you use Signal on your Android phone, can you link with Molly on another Android device (tablet) without Signal complaining?

amelius2• 8 months ago

Protects database

What database?

This page is clearly written for developers that are already familiar with it.

From this I can already predict this project is going nowhere.

anonym296• 8 months ago

What database?

The local database used by Signal to organize every message, every contact, every profile photo, every attachment, every group, basically every dynamic piece of data you interact with in the app.

Signal is basically a UI layer for a database. The in-transit encryption is genuinely good enough to be textbook study material for cryptographers, but the at-rest encryption became a joke the moment they stopped using your pin to encrypt the local DB and requiring it to open the app.

As someone who's been enthusiastic about Signal since it was TextSecure and RedPhone, the changes made over the years to broaden the userbase have been really exciting from an adoption perspective, and really depressing from a security perspective.

TL;DR of Molly is that it fixes/improves several of those security regressions (and adds new security features, like wiping RAM on db lock) while maintaining transparent compatibility with the official servers, and accordingly, other people using the regular Signal client.

chc4• 8 months ago

Signal is an end-to-end encrypted messaging app. People continue to breathlessly mentioning the lack of database encryption as a problem, but that never made it a real security issue: its job is not, and has never been, dissuading an attacker who has local access to one of the ends, especially because that is an incoherent security boundary (just like the people who were very upset about Signal using the system keyboard which is potentially backdoored - if your phone is compromised, of course someone will be be able to read your Signal messages).

tapoxi• 8 months ago

Isn't the phone filesystem encrypted?

bawolff3• 8 months ago

Meh, most phones have full disk encryption. For the average person, encryption at rest in signal doesn't provide very much.

littlestymaar2• 8 months ago

As someone who's been enthusiastic about Signal since it was TextSecure and RedPhone, the changes made over the years to broaden the userbase have been really exciting from an adoption perspective, and really depressing from a security perspective.

As always, it depends on your threat model.

I use signal because I value my privacy and don't trust Facebook. Not because I'm an activist. So I'm in the target group for Signal's new behavior and I welcome it (especially since to use it to share personal information that I don't want Facebook or advertisers to get, I need my parents and in-laws to use it as well, so it must be user friendly enough).

I wish they continue moving forward in that direction by the way and allow shared pictures to be stored directly on the phone's main memory (or at least add an opt-in setting for that), because the security I get from it not being is zero and the usability suffers significantly.

amelius2• 8 months ago

Yes, but this was not about the database, really.

chipheat• 8 months ago

Seems interesting, but are there any screenshots?

contact9879• 8 months ago

it looks just like signal with a purple theme

g-mork• 8 months ago

Extra privacy features and named after UK slang for MDMA, hrm.

sumuyuda• 8 months ago

Molly is the American slang, Mandy is the UK slang for MDMA.

landr0id3• 8 months ago

Contains no proprietary blobs, unlike Signal

What "proprietary blobs" does Signal have?

I'll also just add: it's probably not a good idea to use any modifications to an E2EE messenger unless you are comfortable with those privacy/security guarantees possibly being violated by the 3rd party code.

The only exception to this would be if I really trusted the goals of the 3rd party, like Graphene.

anonym296• 8 months ago

Firebase, GMS (Google Mobile Services). The Alphabet Corporation is part of many security and privacy conscious users' threat model, and these users aren't generally thrilled about leaking even limited message metadata like timing to their adversary, particularly when that adversary is known to cooperate with global passive adversaries.

There are actually two builds of Molly: Molly and Molly-FOSS. IIRC Molly uses regular Firebase, which can be faster and more reliable but comes with the above tradeoffs, while Molly-FOSS uses UnifiedPush.

Your point about exercising caution with forks of encrypted messaging apps is a great rule of thumb, and in general, social proof should NOT substitute for competent software security specialists reading and evaluating source code, but given you seem to trust GrapheneOS, it's worth noting that they've formally endorsed Molly: https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1769277147569443309

landr0id3• 8 months ago

Your point about exercising caution with forks of encrypted messaging apps is a great rule of thumb, and in general, social proof should NOT substitute for competent software security specialists reading and evaluating source code

Also a great point :) And thank you for the reference.

t0bia_s2• 8 months ago

UnifiedPush not works if you not use Molly exclusively on one device. So of you sync between Signal on Win desktop and Android device, your battery drain faster.

grishka3• 8 months ago

What "proprietary blobs" does Signal have?

As they say in the Github readme, FCM and Google Maps.

FCM doesn't technically require a blob — it's just that Google wants you to think it does. I reverse engineered their library and it turned out to be a criminally over-engineered wrapper around two broadcast receivers. So, the Mastodon app is proudly the first app ever to both support FCM push notifications, and be 100% open-source.

nicoburns2• 8 months ago

Oo, do you have a link for your implementation? I will soon be looking at creating a library to support FCM (android push notifications) in Android apps written in Rust. And having a simpler interface with the OS (esp. if it therefore doesn't require building a non-syste library) would be incredibly helpful.

landr0id3• 8 months ago

As they say in the Github readme, FCM and Google Maps.

Thanks, I didn't notice that. Reading this, I'm kind of surprised that Signal doesn't offer an OpenStreetMaps build as it seems like it'd be more inline with their philosophy.

cyberax2• 8 months ago

I reverse-engineered the notification infrastructure in Android, but for me it was the desire to be able to use customer-provided Google API keys ("google-services.json").

The protocol itself was easy, but my problem was that Google Play Services have a special permission to exempt itself from power management. And more importantly, grant that permission temporarily to the individual apps when they have a notification. I don't think I ever found out how to work around this.

gpvos• 8 months ago

FCM = Firebase Cloud Messaging, a messaging and notification service run by Google. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebase_Cloud_Messaging

inputmice• 8 months ago

Maybe the first but not the only one. Ltt.rs (an email client using JMAP) does this as well. BTW you can also directly deliver WebPush notifications to FCM servers. No need for a proxy/rely run by the app developer.

Ltt.rs has support for both UnifiedPush and FCM and is fully open source. The code difference between UP and FCM is very very minimal since - as I said - both are just WebPush endpoints.

TeMPOraL3• 8 months ago

OTOH it's nice to have an alternative client. If E2EE messenger system is going to lock itself down hard, trying to "protect" itself from the user even harder than third party adversaries, then I personally see no point - might as well use Whatsapp.

I miss the times IM software respected, or at least didn't fight hard to defeat, the end-user's freedom to computing on their own device, which includes viewing and sending messages through whatever interface they see fit, including indirectly as part of a script/automation. But that was all before E2EE era, hell, before mobile dominance.

godelski13• 8 months ago

  > might as well use Whatsapp.

  - still scrapes metadata
  - run by company who's entire objective is to profile you

Stop being so ridiculous. You can criticize Signal (and there's plenty to critique) but that's just silly. What, should we also just use telegram where E2EE is off by default?

You know signal is open source, right? That's why Molly exists. They can run their own servers too.

Now I wish you could do both. Talk in both signal and the decentralized molly servers. I wish signal had a mesh like feature since it's way harder to snoop on conversations if you have to be physically near. I even wish Signal made the signal sticker site accessible from inside the app. There's tons of things they should do but let's not pretend that just because they're not perfect that we should use apps from a company whose motto might as well be "be evil".

jdironman• 8 months ago

What about the server portion? that's the thing I would like to have forked / open source.

some_furry4• 8 months ago

Good news! https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server

einpoklum• 8 months ago

But is there federation between instances of this and the official signal servers?

slurrpurr2• 8 months ago

What is the point of this? Just use the regular signal app. It may be more safe, but are the developers trustworthy enough?

Tepix3• 8 months ago

It has various improvements and you can also use your private signal server. I believe it also lets you backup your data! How about that for digital sovereignty.

slurrpurr2• 8 months ago

Signal also lets you backup your data, for a small subscription

dtj1123• 8 months ago

Wasn't aware you could run your own signal server. How do you go about setting one up?

wakawaka284• 8 months ago

Are Signal developers trustworthy enough? What about this push for "cloud backups"? There are other flaws in Signal too like being able to monitor people's phone usage and stuff through the notification system. I can't find it now but Signal and WeChat have the same issues, and both received a disclosure. Only WeChat did anything about it. Sad...

Edit: Found it! "Careless Whisper: Exploiting Silent Delivery Receipts to Monitor Users on Mobile Instant Messengers" https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.11194

throawayonthe2• 8 months ago

i use it only because it happens to have a convenient 'supply trust chain' on GrapheneOS: (built-in) App Store -> Accrescent[0] -> Molly (seems to ship the 'FOSS' version)

i don't use any of the enhancements, but it does receive notifications over the websocket it keeps open in the background vs only waking up on an FCM push notification like the regular app

i wonder if the supply chain risk of having a second entity (that signs the apks!) involved is really worth it to anyone... hope signal can be published on Accrescent or similar someday :p

[0] https://accrescent.app/

crtasm2• 8 months ago

can you install fdroid from the graphene store? signal is available in there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46082592

foresto• 8 months ago

To be clear, Signal is not available from F-Droid. The above link is about a fourth party publishing a Signal build in an f-droid-compatible repository.

LtWorf3• 8 months ago

f-droid ships libre software only.

3rd party repositories ship whatever.

throawayonthe2• 8 months ago

No, and I don't want to rely on f-droid for anything important due to their shoddy security practices (+ as a sibling comment says there's no official signal binaries on fdroid)

For apps i do install from f-droid repos (official or otherwise) i prefer https://github.com/Droid-ify/client

OneDeuxTriSeiGo2• 8 months ago

vs only waking up on an FCM push notification like the regular app

FWIW you can actually do the FOSS version of this now with UnifiedPush support (rolled out in Molly a while back).

It's a massive saver on battery life but it does require that you have a server set up to forward notifications to your unifiedpush distributor.

throwaway193434• 8 months ago

supply trust chain and GrapheneOS in the same sentence?

mid-kid• 8 months ago

This app's killer feature for me is that it's actually available on F-Droid, unlike its upstream.

Happy user for many years now, thanks for the support!

EffrafaxOfWug• 8 months ago

There is also a signal build in the fdroid repo of the Guardian Project

crtasm2• 8 months ago

which is easily enabled in f-droid: settings > repositories > toggle it on

g-b-r• 8 months ago

"fdroid repos" have little to do with what people consider F-Droid, they can host any whatsoever binary.

In fact, that's not a build by the Guardian Project, but (when I tried) a redistribution of Signal's https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/releases builds.

I'm not sure why they're doing it; anyhow, I'd at least avoid doing the initial installation through that repo, you're trusting an additional party for no gain that I could think of (updates are ok because the signature needs to match the one of the installed version).

DANmode4• 8 months ago

Didn’t know this was in there, thanks!

marssaxman• 8 months ago

Good to know - that would make my life a little easier.

godelski13• 8 months ago

APKs are available btw

https://signal.org/android/apk/

medstrom• 8 months ago

Self-updating too!

twothreeone• 8 months ago

been using this for years.. it doesn't have the GCM crap and hence works on de-googlified custom ROMs as well. Surprised how many people don't seem to know about it.

throwaway193434• 8 months ago

That's not enough.

OneDeuxTriSeiGo2• 8 months ago

The killer feature for me is that molly-im also supports UnifiedPush for notifications instead of just websocket and FCM like upstream Signal.

immibis• 8 months ago

Can't wait to see how the lawsuit goes. Moxie is infamously protective of Signal.

jsiepkes• 8 months ago

Moxie hasn't been affiliated with Signal for years. He stepped back years ago.

Tepix3• 8 months ago

The Signal Android app is AGPL licensed. What should the lawsuit be about?

singpolyma33• 8 months ago

Signal used to threaten people for trademark infringement because the word "signal" was in the protocol on the wire.

I think they've relaxed this quite a bit more recently

sneak• 8 months ago

There is nothing legally stopping people from forking the signal app and distributing it (even configured to talk to the official signal.org servers) so long as they don’t use the Signal trademarks.

Also, as others pointed out, Moxie isn’t part of Signal any longer and hasn’t been for a while.

IshKebab• 8 months ago

https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android/blob/285650e38613...

I'm pretty unconvinced that this is a sane or useful thing to do.

saghm• 8 months ago

Is there a specific part you're referring to? For those of us who don't read or write Java frequently, it's not clear whether it's worth it to spend time reading the code without at least having some sense of whether you might be making a compelling point or not.

wakawaka284• 8 months ago

You need to be more specific. Lots of security-conscious apps wipe their memory. Memory contains, among other things, the decrypted text and private keys for the app. RAM is known to hold data longer than you'd want, and it can be swapped out onto persistent storage like the internal SSD. If you don't know that wiping memory is a basic and common feature for apps like this, then you're not qualified to have an opinion. Now if you think wiping the memory is ineffective, inefficient, or superceded by a bigger issue, then we might have something to talk about.

k_bx• 8 months ago

multi-device

Can someone explain, is this different from adding (up to 5) devices to your Signal account? Are these devices all "primary" or something?

jeltz7• 8 months ago

Signal's official Android app does not support being linked, only the iOS and desktop apps support that. This is why I use Molly.

I would ideally want to not have one device being the master and the rest linked to it (e.g. Element can do that for Matrix) but that might be a too big change. And as far as I know Molly does not try to solve that.

automathematics• 8 months ago

I just saw a blog post they’re working on this in the official app, though! Finally. Fingers crossed.

ahazred8ta3• 8 months ago

There's a deliberate nit in Signal that you can't have it on both an Android phone and a no-sim Android tablet; both take turns trying to seize the role. Apparently Molly can handle both.

qmr3• 8 months ago

Are you sure about that?

I used both desktop and android with no issues.

n3dm• 8 months ago

I've used Molly for over a year. Overnight it lost the device registration and will not contact the servers to re-register. The backup feature also does not work which left me dead in the water for several days with no fix. I switched back to signal and had to start a new database. It was a disaster. YMMV

jeltz7• 8 months ago

Sounds pretty much like my experience with the official Signal app. It is a mess too and I only use Signal/Molly because I have friends who use it.

But sadly the competitors are as bad, just in different ways. Why has nobody yet managed to build a good IM client? It does not seem like we have come far from what we had back in the Pidgin days.

stackghost• 8 months ago

Beeper is pretty good. I daily drive it on multiple protocols.

prmoustache2• 8 months ago

conversations (xmpp) and deltachat work pretty well in my experience.

ForHackernews2• 8 months ago

Very few of the protocols supported by Pidgin were encrypted, unless you used the OTR plugin. That makes it a lot easier to support things like chat history.

e403• 8 months ago

I’ve used Signal across many devices for years with zero problems.

krater233• 8 months ago

The deathblow for Signal was that I was in a group and some group messages just got lost for some members completely unnoticed. So you could never be sure if you missed something or someone. I'm using WhatsApp again, now since years and had never issues, it just works.

miki1232112• 8 months ago

Because everybody (except Telegram funnily enough) is prioritizing security over user convenience.

Most apps on the market are E2E by default these days, and that introduces a whole host of complications. It's the wrong tradeoff for 95+ percent of users. If you can only afford 1 device and only switch to a new one when the old device breaks, E2E is a disaster in the making. For the overwhelming majority of users, making sure that they have access to their messages when they switch devices is far more important than being protected from the NSA. This is something most signal advocates are completely unwilling to talk about.

boznz• 8 months ago

SMS works just fine for me, but international calling is a killer, it's 2025 you would think this would be free by now.

echelon_musk• 8 months ago

I haven't dropped molly for a long time. But it feels like the right thing here.

analogpixel2• 8 months ago

Does it lock me out of the app like signal if I don't update the app every few weeks? I'm looking for an app that never needs to be updated; Oh, I guess that is email.

some_furry4• 8 months ago

Enjoy getting pwned by zero-click exploits that have been widely patched elsewhere and disclosed publicly, I guess?

analogpixel2• 8 months ago

weird, I have never been pwned via email which has been updated 0 times in the last 20 years. I guess Signal is just so poorly made it needs to be constantly re-written every 2 weeks.

godelski13• 8 months ago

Why do you want an app that never gets updated? You want bugs to persist and security issues to persist?

AFAIK signal only blocks due to security patches. Which it's on a much longer timeframe than a few weeks.

elaus2• 8 months ago

I think the distinction here is they want an app that never NEEDS to be updated, not one that never DOES get updates (which is fair – I'm happy if things just work and are not changed every 2 weeks).

rjdj377dhabsn• 8 months ago

The decision to update or not shouldn't be taken away from users.

Frequent updates have the downside of more frequent breakage and of course extra bandwidth usage. Let users make the trade off between those downsides and the risk of zero days.

SigUp91• 8 months ago

Signal blocks not only the specific app from working if it's not updated, but disables your whole account if you can't update the mobile app.

I had to live without a phone for about a year. First my phone broke and I couldn't repair it or buy a new one, then I lost my phone number due to unpaid fees. I kept using the Linux Electron app, updating it as often as possible.

I saw this message on the Linux app after a while:

Open Signal on your phone to keep your account active

I couldn't open Signal on my phone or install a new Android Signal app even on an Android VM because I wouldn't be able to get the new app verified without access to the phone number I registered with.

I wrote an email to the support team and got this reply:

Using Signal for iOS or Android as your primary device in order to link and use Signal for Desktop was always a requirement as a QR code must be scanned to link a device. The primary device must remain active during this usage. There is no way around this.
For more information and recovery steps please see our faq page here: https://support.signal.org/hc/articles/8997185514138-Re-conn...
Otherwise your account will be deactivated, and you will need to reinstall and register for Signal using an up-to-date version of the application.

And as to when that deactivation would happen, they replied:

We're unable to provide a specific timeline. We recommend registering for a Signal account on a smartphone and linking your Desktop to that smartphone within the next few weeks.

From their link it seems like there's an actual technical reason behind this. I'm not sure if it's true, but it feels a bit suspect.

So, after a couple of months of seeing this message in the Linux app, I woke up with a deactivated Signal account. I asked some of my Signal contacts to use Matrix until I get a new phone number. It seems much better in this regard - it's not mobile first and it doesn't require ongoing access to a phone number. The basic features are all there, even if there a few minor annoyances and bugs in the clients here and there.

krater233• 8 months ago

How can I as user differentiate between a security update and a update thats infected by some government trojan? I only have a 'Install or you can't use again'-Button.

raphman2• 8 months ago

The Whisperfish [1] project (a Signal messenger for Sailfish OS) maintains an independent Signal client library written in Rust [2]. It works quite well - unless Signal decides to change their protocols or kick non-standard clients.

[1] https://gitlab.com/whisperfish/whisperfish

[2] https://github.com/whisperfish/presage

hiq• 8 months ago

To be clear this library depends on libsignal.

NewJazz• 8 months ago

Whisperfish appears to be an app, not a library.

preisschild2• 8 months ago

I'd just wish Molly had a live-tracking feature, similar to Telegram-FOSS.

But not sure if even the upstream Signal client has this.

some_furry4• 8 months ago

Why would privacy apps have this feature?

attila-lendvai• 8 months ago

to share your location with trusted people when e.g. you are in a dangerous situation.

or to set up a timed SOS signal if you don't disarm it within a given deadline.

preisschild2• 8 months ago

To make it easy to meet friends/family in crowded places

Its not permanent, you just enable it for a few minutes until you find each other

tamimio• 8 months ago

So, you still need a phone number? It doesn’t mention anywhere that’s not a requirement

Y-bar• 8 months ago

An iOS version would be lovely in the future!

seany• 8 months ago

Now we just need to drop the phone number requirements and signal would be "done" for all practical purposes

wakawaka284• 8 months ago

Phone numbers aren't required now. But there are flaws in Signal. Your phone usage can be tracked in high resolution through constant pinging of malformed status messages. I can't find the paper right now but researchers found that they could track their own data about when the phone was on, unlocked, and had Signal on the screen. That can be correlated between users, to see who is talking to who. It can be used to try to ambush you while the phone is unlocked. You don't even have to have a connection to the spies, if I remember right. Signal devs have done nothing about this issue since being notified like a year ago.

Edit: Found it! "Careless Whisper: Exploiting Silent Delivery Receipts to Monitor Users on Mobile Instant Messengers" https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.11194

toastal2• 8 months ago

Phone numbers aren't required now.

Signal still requires a phone number for registration.

eviks• 8 months ago

For very limited practical purposes. Others would include proper multi device support

sabjut• 8 months ago

My main grievances with the Signal app are mainly centered around UI and UX, and features. Without trying to be mean, I think it's plain ugly and clunky. Features like live location or persistent multi-device messages etc will probably never be implemented with the current strategy of Signal.

The fact that this "improved" version does not show a single screenshot of the UI on their own website, signals to me (pun intended) that this app will address none of my wishes.

panzi• 8 months ago

Really? Signal does everything I want from a messaging app. I can't imagine what could be better about its GUI. But I'm no GUI designer.

elaus2• 8 months ago

I searched so long for a single screenshot, looking at the app stores (in my browser) and Github with no success.

It really is weird not to show a single screenshot when the 4th listed feature is design ("Material You | Extra theme that follows your device palette").

gitaarik4• 8 months ago

Just installed it, it looks exactly the same, just a bit more purple theme

vitorgrs3• 8 months ago

Came here to comment exactly this. Even opened github expecting to see something...

c249709• 8 months ago

please include a screenshot of your app somewhere on your website or repo. why would I download an app if I don't even know what it looks like?

singpolyma33• 8 months ago

It looks like signal

kyledrake• 8 months ago

One thing that would be really nice from a new user perspective would be to have some screenshots so people can visually see the interface. Just giving some "get new users" feedback, not criticizing at all.

VladVladikoff• 8 months ago

$50 says this is some nation state trying to sow seeds of discord into the Signal user base. Signal is actually becoming so well adopted most of my friends are on it now. Trying to convince them all to use yet another app is going to be pretty tough, especially since there isn’t really any decent evidence that Signal is insecure.

o999• 8 months ago

It is a Signal client that uses same servers (i.e Users of Molly and Signal's official app can message and call each othera normally).

toastal2• 8 months ago

Why should we be trusting this centralized service? I regret getting my family onto Signal as I would love to get there somewhere where we control our data & aren’t reliant on US-based service. When you look at the EU’s Chat Control law that’s trying to be pushed, the easiest target is going to be big, centralized services in jurisdictions friendly to the EU—it’s gonna be real hard doing this with a decentralized protocol. Signal deserves just as much criticism as any other thing operating out of California.

DANmode4• 8 months ago

Because they’re multi-region AWS!

seanieb• 8 months ago

- Signal is built in such a way that you do not need to trust the server. They’ve invented several novel encryption protocols beyond the messaging protocol that protects group membership and privacy.

- they’re open source and people like me regularly read parts of their code and in some cases use their code elsewhere. Also several undergraduates and PhD’s have written research papers on the signal protocol. It’s also the subject of a lot of security research (there was a good talk at defcon this year that found some minor privacy issues with signal notifications)

- no one has built a decentralized e2ee messaging app that’s actually secure and has privacy anything like the bar Signal sets. Matrix are getting close, they’ve recently made some encouraging changes, but it will take some time to verify.

- Moxie the founder of Signal gave a talk about the challenges of building something like signal in a decentralized environment - https://youtu.be/1W5fuqySBnE

- Signal is a nonprofit. They have stated repeatedly they will shutdown the app in regions or countries that make backdoors required by law.

mijoharas• 8 months ago

Two questions:

* Do you know of anything better?

* Do you not trust the Signal Organisation? They've aren't able to subvert their encryption on the servers, and have publicly stated that they will leave a region before integrating client-side scanning. I for one believe them, since it's their raison d'être.

jeltz7• 8 months ago

If so they are certainly doing it ambitiously by fixing longstanding issues in Signal.

GuB-42• 8 months ago

Signal has always seen some controversy, usually centered around centralization. Also the MOB cryptocurrency, the use of phone numbers, contact discovery,... It has led to the promotion of alternatives such as Matrix and third party applications such as Molly.

But these alternatives are all niches compared to Signal. Which is to say something considering that Signal itself is a niche compared to Whatsapp.

LtWorf3• 8 months ago

Let's not forget not releasing the server software for several years.

alexnewman• 8 months ago

I’ve never trusted signal. Signal desktop does not seem reproducible . It’s not clear to me how its infrastructure is deployed. The servers buffer messages to a large degree

qmr3• 8 months ago

That's great news but I just switched to iOS.

throwawayk7h• 8 months ago

Does it add back the killer feature of SMS fallback?

If not, I'll stick with Matrix. It's got privacy at least as good as signal, with Discord's UX.

quickslowdown• 8 months ago

What client app are you using for Matrix? I really love the idea of switching over to it, or something similar, after Discord's IPO. We tried Revolt, which is now apparently called Stoat Chat, but the 2 killer features with Discord are its screen sharing & noise cancelling. Some of the screen sharing "extras" I could do without, but using Element we found that background noise cancelling is awful. You can hear every seat readjustment, things in other rooms in the person's background, loud breathing, people eating...it's awful.

throwaway193434• 8 months ago

No, Matrix privacy is in no way comparable with signal.

SomeHacker44• 8 months ago

Android Signal does not support being a companion tablet app to a primary phone Signal. So you have to use Molly if you want to have Signal on your Android tablet. It has been reliable for me in that role since the Pixel Tab came out and I switched from an iPad.

shellpipe• 8 months ago

this is great. having a few screenshots would be sweet.

max_• 8 months ago

The Signal discourages the use of Molly.

throwaway193434• 8 months ago

one more reason to use Molly

issafram• 8 months ago

Says it's on F-Droid and it isn't. Search turns up no results

TheChaplain• 8 months ago

Try scanning the QR-code. It works.

gitaarik4• 8 months ago

It's in a third party repo that you need to add first

ewenquim• 8 months ago

I don't want a new chat app, I want an unified protocol and bring my own client

Zambyte2• 8 months ago

There is no way to use the Signal app on a device without a camera (USB cameras are even explicitly blocked!), and sync it with another computer. I use a Daylight computer as my primary mobile machine, which does not have a camera. The Molly app is the only way I am able to use Signal on multiple devices.

egberts12• 8 months ago

Whaaat? Signal on Linux working here; no video stream nor camera device installed.

Zambyte2• 8 months ago

On Linux and what?

I use Signal on Linux, and Molly on my tablet. The issue I ran into was in trying to use Signal on both.

t0bia_s2• 8 months ago

But Molly still cannot use UnifiedPush if you use multiple devices. So it is still dependent on proprietary google push services.

pavlov• 8 months ago

The name immediately makes me think of 1990s raves, since it’s a nickname for ecstasy (the drug). I guess that’s a generational thing.

tdrz• 8 months ago

The fact that Signal gets bad publicity or "improved" alternatives pop up tells me that they are a real threat to the mainstream apps.

Molly: An Improved Signal App

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