Signal-desktop: Android: Sync messages sent to self

[GuardianMajor]

• [x] I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates

---

Bug description

When sharing something to self on Android, it will not list the own verified number but sending it by typing the number does send the message and shows up on Android (twice of course as sent/received) but at no point does this show up on the own verified number on the Electron desktop app. However, sending from the Electron desktop app to self, does show up on the desktop and will show up on the Android (again twice on both sides) but still not under the verified account, just the number itself. (see screenshots below it will make more sense, hard to describe it otherwise).

Steps to reproduce

• On Android, share something to yourself
• Your own number doesn't show up anywhere, recent or contact list
• typing your own number on the search eventually eliminates everyone and allows to send a message to yourself
• The message immediately appears as both sent and received on the message list under your own number
• The message doesn't show up on the desktop app
• On the desktop app send something to your own number
• It shows up twice as both sent/received on the desktop app and also twice as sent and received on the android app
• on the android app, the contact for your own number doesn't show your avatar or properly list you, just shows as a number without contact

Actual result: see above as you take steps to replicate
Expected result: messages sent to yourself on either android or desktop should synchronize, otherwise it is useless to have yourself as a contact entity, also better to only show one entry since you are sending it to yourself and the source and destination are the same person, having it show up twice on each side seems a bit redundant and silly unnecessary

Screenshots

This is the screenshot of my account on the Android

This is how it appears in the message list, without the avatar and as a general unknown contact

the yellow box is the shared to the Android that did not show up on the desktop application

This is my account on the desktop and no messages synced from the Android side and shows properly as a contact however

Platform info

Operating System: Android 7.1.1 / Windows 10 Pro x64
Signal version: 4.13.6 / 1.1.0-beta.2

[scottnonnenberg]

There's a long history of bugs in this space: #1760, #1137, #876 and (a little different) #958.

It's sadly a By Design issue in the world of Android, so perhaps we can all band together to get that to change. :0)

[Trolldemorted]

Changing the status quo to stop duplicating selfmessages (on S-D and S-A) and allowing to send direct messages to yourself (on S-A) is easy.

If you want that, I can have a look whether my PRs need rebasing.

[scottnonnenberg]

I don't see any reason not to do it... do you know the history there?

[Trolldemorted]

Of course: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/pull/5905

tl;dr moxie doesn't want selfmessages to just work, he wants a "memo" thing because he fears selfmessages to be confusing to users.

Unfortunately I never found the time to dig into Signal-Android's UI code, so the memo-thing is still not implemented.

[GuardianMajor]

@scottnonnenberg I appreciate that and if I had more time (as you know about my private life, I won't go into it) then I would gladly take a stab at it on the android side to assist on the fix but unfortunately I have not had enough time to keep up with all the code changes on the android side and might be too far behind the curve to help on that.

However, if someone, say @Trolldemorted or others can work on that, I would happily test it and provide feedback, just include me on any pull/commits and I will happily do my part. The double entry certainly is quite annoying and if we can fix it, as stated can be easily done, that would certainly be a marked improvement. I have always thought for example that if we send from Desktop to self, then show it on the other received end of the memo, and if sending from android/ios to self then show it on the sender side of the memo, this way you know which client did the sending and that should also make moxie happy on the "confusion" of the memo-thing I think.

[GuardianMajor]

@scottnonnenberg I should note that I did a through search of the issues to see the long running issues you mentioned, unfortunately the system didn't return any results, apologies if you felt this was a duplicate of something that was mentioned before, that was not my intention and it was not for lack of effort to make sure either.

[alrikvonsturmfels]

Any news about this issue? Is there a workaround to post myself from S-A to S-D?

As it is now, I can post to myself from S-D to S-A, without message duplication. It just works.
But if I try to post to myself from S-A to S-D, the message is duplicated on the Android client and does not reach the desktop client at all...

[GuardianMajor]

I have been patiently waiting for this as well and it is very disappointing that after all this time there has been no progress on a feature that I would argue is more important in many sense than some of the things that have been implemented so far.

You send something to yourself from Desktop, it shows up on Android, duplicates, which is dumb but shows up. When you reply or send something to your self from Android, never shows up on the desktop client. This is a very serious limitation and even when it does deliver from desktop to android, it will not show you as your verified name, number and icon, it arrives as some generate entry showing [phone] format which is another failure, given the whole point of having the verified identity was to standardize communication with yourself.

[Trolldemorted]

@alrikvonsturmfels If you consider building S-A yourself, my PR still works flawlessly.

[alrikvonsturmfels]

@GuardianMajor: I second your post!

@Trolldemorted: Thanks! Your edit of MessageSender.java worked fine for me until I upgraded to Windows 10 (with Java 8) a few months ago.

Since then, I have problems to run Android Studio: I get a git error ("Process 'command 'git'' finished with non-zero exit value 128") all the time, but I don't find any wrong settings. It should work as it did on my Windows 7, but it doesn't. I'm quite sure it's something trivial, but due to job and family I don't have the time to go into it. Btw, the Gradle Wrapper Daemon (gradlew.bat) generates the same error.

[greyson-signal]

This has been fixed via the introduction of Note to Self.