Signal-desktop: Why has the individual chat color disappeared?

[patlecat]

Version 1.15

Again you did change something without asking. All individual chat colors are gone. All is gray now!

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

You appear to be using an iOS device. iOS will soon start allowing you to choose colors, sorry about the inconvenience!

[patlecat]

I appear to not use iOS, does the desktop version even run on iOS? I'm using Windows10.

[jraczynski]

@scottnonnenberg-signal It's not about the blue chat colors as it was recently - everything is monochromatic now after the new layout update. I'm using Signal Desktop for Mac.

[He-Ro]

A screenshot might solve the ambiguity.

[RaphaelAudet]

I have this also on the desktop app (osx)

[remusao]

Is this new theme a work in progress? It looks far less polished and clean than the previous version.

[lamarqua]

Very surprised to see all the colors disappear too. (macOS electron app)
I hope they're going to make a come back. In particular the individual colors for the different people speaking were a useful visual aid.

[WestleyArgentum]

I'm sorry, y'all are amazing but this monochromatic version of desktop (v1.15.0) is breaking my heart. Please please please bring back a dark mode with colors.

[jraczynski]

It must be a bug, maybe related to previous iOS/Android display setting, because my friends have colors using this new design.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

Sorry about the confusion, everyone. If you have paired Signal Desktop to Signal Android, Signal Android will send colors along with the contacts it provides to Signal Desktop. However, Signal iOS doesn't do that yet, but will soon.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@remusao Would love to know more about the things you think aren't polished. Perhaps there's something you've noticed that we haven't?

[nathan]

@scottnonnenberg-signal The checkmark next to "Verified" is almost touching the "V"

[hamptonlongden]

scottnonnenber: "Sorry about the confusion, everyone. If you have paired Signal Desktop to Signal Android, Signal Android will send colors along with the contacts it provides to Signal Desktop. However, Signal iOS doesn't do that yet, but will soon."

Shouldn't this have default colours? Will this still work if you don't sync your address book with signal servers? (I don't).

[hamptonlongden]

The date and time text, i.e. things like "10 MIN AGO" are in block capitals and very near the same colour as message text (This is with non synced colours. I don't know what it looks like when synced as I use iOS). This makes everything seem more cluttered and is distracting from the actual messages. It's a huge difference to the previous update. Ideally these things should be in faint / light grey text.

[andrewaustin]

Please supply default color on the iOS desktop app so that the chat bubbles and contacts are not gray by default.

[patlecat]

Also it's confusing that the read confirmation of a message is now also in gray instead of blue as it should be!

[midnightmagic]

My world is grey. My tears are grey. My apartment is grey. My friends are grey. My window is grey. My heart is grey..

[remusao]

Would love to know more about the things you think aren't polished. Perhaps there's something you've noticed that we haven't?

@scottnonnenberg I think the issue I have is the same as other people reported so far, but as I understand it, it might be related to the fact that my desktop signal is sync with the iOS app?

The biggest issue is that everything is now shades of grey: default contact avatars (the letter version used as default, but the contacts which provided a picture seem to work as expected: the picture is displayed), messages sent by contact and sent by me, etc. The messages sent by me used to appear in blue (like on the mobile app), but now they are light grey. The messages received used to be light grey I think (like on mobile app currently), but now they are dark grey.

Here is how a conversation looks like:

And how the default avatars look like:

So overall I guess the total lack of any color makes the app look so different from Signal, that it feels like using a different messaging app. I don't find the familiar Signal's color codes used on mobile devices and previously by desktop anymore.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@remusao The monochromatic contact colors are a temporary issue, so that will be addressed soon. Please let us know if you have any other feedback!

[WestleyArgentum]

Out of curiosity, is there a Signal-iOS issue tracking this that we could follow? I looked around a little but didn't find anything directly related

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@WestleyArgentum I haven't looked; feel free to create one! :0)

[remusao]

@scottnonnenberg This issue is marked as "iOS change needed" (which I first understood as: some iOS changes are on their way to fix this). But is someone from the iOS project aware of this issue already? Or do we need to create an issue to make people aware of this?

[jschneier]

Why would you break this intentionally? That doesn't make any sense.

[TomReidNZ]

Same issue here. Grey on macOS and iOS. Been waiting for a fix for a while.......

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

Hey all - you'll be happy to know that v1.15.5, just released to production, introduces an iOS-specific color scheme. It will now match what you see on Signal iOS. Let us know what you think!

[jasonku]

@scottnonnenberg-signal I am on Desktop 1.15.5 and iOS 2.28.1.5 and I still see monochromatic Desktop app. Do I need to do anything else to get the colors?

[TempSpas]

Seconding @jasonku. I see no difference. Same Signal versions, macOS 10.13.6.

[wdormann]

Looks good to me. The colors are back with 1.15.5

[TomReidNZ]

With 1.15.5 on macOS I have blue messages from myself only. Everything else is still grey.

[jasonku]

To clarify, I see what @TomReidNZ sees: blue messages from myself, everything else gray. I expected that the placeholder avatars on the left nav would also be colored.

[WestleyArgentum]

I'm running iOS version 2.28.1 and desktop version 1.15.5. I see the blue chat bubbles now but I'm worried there was some miscommunication initially with what everyone meant regarding the missing colors...

Back before desktop version 1.15.0 all of my contacts had a color associated with them. This was great! In different group chats when a new message arrived I would immediately understand who had sent it and I wouldn't have to spend any mental energy piecing together the flow of the conversation. If we talked about something in real life later it was easy to remember who had said what. But now every time you read a message in a group chat you need to also look for and read the author label explicitly in order to understand the flow of the conversation.

Also, anecdotally, I think many people have trouble with sometimes messaging the wrong signal group chat. When you're in several at once it can be easy to slip up, which obviously can cause serious problems. Colored chat bubbles help mitigate this by giving you that much more context when you're typing. If in your head you're composing a message to one person but you see a different color up above you're more likely to pause and realize your mistake. That doesn't happen when everything is the same limited set of colors and the extra information you'd need to stop yourself from slipping up is only parsable as text.

Maybe it seems ridiculous but I think many other people here (and definitely other people I've talked with who haven't jumped into this discussion) really valued those per-contact colors. I think they helped with usability and, frankly, security.

[wdormann]

I suspect there are two issues being conflated here:
1) Up until 1.15.5, everything was gray. Even your own messages.
2) Per-contact colors are missing

I can confirm that 1) is fixed. As for 2), I'm not even sure how one would set such a preference. And perhaps that's what this bug is about.

[jschneier]

My impression is that the fix for 2 is going to be a sync with your phone
so it’s consistent between platforms.

On Thursday, August 16, 2018, wdormann [e-mail] wrote:

I suspect there are two issues being conflated here:

1. Up until 1.15.5, everything was gray. Even your own messages.
2. Per-contact colors are missing

I can confirm that 1) is fixed. As for 2), I'm not even sure how one would
set such a preference. And perhaps that's what this bug is about.

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[wdormann]

However, that's not possible with the iOS version of the Signal app. See: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/1434

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

I've been in contact with the iOS folks, and this is the Desktop side of the change. There will be an iOS update where contact colors are sync'd to Desktop, which will add color to the placeholder avatars.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

I'm marking this as fixed.

[WestleyArgentum]

I'm not seeing the fix, to be honest. I'm trying to check for updates but as far as I can tell I'm on the latest iOS (version 2.29.2) and desktop (version 1.16.0).

Are per-contact colors supposed to be back?

EDIT: I was on iOS version 2.29.1 and there was an update, but after restarting both iOS and desktop I'm not seeing any change

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@WestleyArgentum You're on the right versions - go to Signal Desktop preferences and choose 'Import Now' to force a contact sync (which includes contact color).

[WestleyArgentum]

Thanks for following up!

I've tried importing, quitting, restarting, and importing again a few times but unfortunately I'm not getting it to work. Also looked through all the settings I could find on iOS and restarted that for good measure. On both iOS and desktop I'm still seeing my messages in blue and everyone else's in grey.

I talked with someone recently who said they updated and briefly saw colors but that they disappeared again. I'll try and talk with them and see if I can find anything more helpful to report.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@WestleyArgentum Oh, I see. Yes, if you're using iOS, the message bubbles will be either blue or grey to match the app. If your contacts don't have photo avatars chosen, then their default avatars will have the per-contact color you're used to.

What probably happened with your friend is that they updated to the version of iOS that sent colors over (a recent change) but they hadn't updated yet to the version of Signal Desktop which mirrors the Signal iOS look (blue and grey bubbles).