Signal-desktop: Feature Request: Don't automatically unlink until six months have passed

[purpleidea]

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

Bug Description

I mostly use signal on an android phone and on a desktop using the signal flatpak. I also use it on my laptop, but much less often. Normally, all three devices keeps their message history in sync.

When I open the laptop version of signal, it sometimes say I need to "relink". I never did anything to unlink. I can still see the device as "linked" in the other signal app's. The only thing that seems to have changed is that I haven't opened it here in at least two weeks.

When I relink, all the conversation history from this time period is lost on this device. This is a simple distributed systems replay bug-- I am shocked that signal would lose data in this way.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install signal on more than one device.
2. Don't open signal on secondary device for over two weeks.
3. Open it and notice that message history from that intermediate time is lost.
4. Be surprised about failed distributed systems sync. Keep using IRC since it "just works". (Encryption is great, but "just working" is more important.)

Actual Result:

Lost message history.

Expected Result:

Missing message history is replayed.

Screenshots

N/A

Platform Info

Signal Version:

Latest as of 27/Dec/2020

Operating System:

Linux, Android and Linux.

It's 100% reproducible. It should be easy for the developers to understand.

Thanks

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

Linked devices are unlinked after 30 days of inactivity. This is partially because every message sent to that device is kept on the Signal server until that device starts up again and downloads them.

You mention 'distributed systems' a good bit, but I want to be clear about how Signal works: when a user sends a message to you, they send a separately-encrypted message to you for each of your registered devices. Those messages are saved in that device's queue on the server until it can download it. For mobile devices, they are notified immediately, and download them quickly. Desktop can't do that, so its queues get very large.

Maybe you'd like to change the title to something like 'Feature Request: Don't unlink Desktop after 30 days'?

[purpleidea]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2021 at 7:11 PM Scott Nonnenberg [e-mail]
wrote:

Linked devices are unlinked after 30 days of inactivity. This is partially
because every message sent to that device is kept on the Signal server
until that device starts up again and downloads them.

You mention 'distributed systems' a good but, but I want to be clear about
how Signal works: when a user sends a message to you, they send a
separately-encrypted message to you for each of your registered devices.
Those messages are saved in that device's queue on the server until it can
download it. For mobile devices, they are notified immediately, and
download them quickly. Desktop can't do that, so its queues get very large.

Maybe you'd like to change the title to something like 'Feature Request:
Don't unlink Desktop after 30 days'?

Yes, there should be a way to change this to at least six months.

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[reetp]

Ironically I just relinked one of my Desktops (I switch infrequently between 2) after forgetting the dreaded timeout and I still have a load of OLD messages there up to about the 27th Nov (presumably when I last had the app open).

But no messages between then and now.

I can understand not downloading messages for a NEW linked device, but this was previously linked. It just needs updating.

30 days is just nowhere near enough and hugely frustrating.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@reetp @purpleidea Both of you can really help us out by talking about your Desktop usage patterns with a little more detail. Is it once very six weeks that you use Desktop? Why? The more you can tell us, the better we can plan for your use cases.

[reetp]

@reetp @purpleidea Both of you can really help us out by talking about your Desktop usage patterns with a little more detail. Is it once very six weeks that you use Desktop? Why? The more you can tell us, the better we can plan for your use cases.

Thanks for asking.

Mine varies wildly (Covid aside!). Could be 4 - 6 machines over a period of several months. (Offices in 2 different countries and laptops in between)

But mainly between a couple of desktops I have here. Depends on several factors, but I can change office/room every few months, back and forth. There isn't any real great pattern. It's kind of hot desking, but not.

And worse is that I don't always use the desktop app - depends who I am talking too. If it is private/personal I usually use my phone. But if it is work then I use the desktop so I can copy & paste & write stuff easily.

Movements - I could be on Desktop A, move to B for a month or two, NOT use Signal on B, and then go back to A again. And then use Signal again. Then go back to B after a few weeks or more, fire up Signal, and gone again. Ironically this is affected a lot by the weather - hot and cold, aircon & heating....

I can understand not loading history if this is a NEW desktop. But with existing links verified I don't expect them to time out that fast. I could understand if you said 'ahh privacy - we need to clear the app' - but this is my own account and linked to my phone. It IS me!

And if someone else fires up the app they can see the old history even if the link has timed out, which is actually a bug IMHO.

A choice of timeout lengths would help at least somewhat - depends how long they were for, or a (bl**dy) phone reminder that they are going to expire. Like I need yet another notification :-(

Quite simply a lot of the time I no longer bother as it is easier just to use my own Rocket.Chat and give someone an account, or use some other system instead.

[rcontisplk]

I fear that heavy users of Signal and their particular use cases may skew the perception of this FR, whereas new users and lighter users like us will be often tripped up like this. This problem creates artificial friction in the usage of Signal. I'd say I've been using Signal for 5 years and this is a near-constant annoyance. It used to also happen with updates, as well, but they've either gotten less frequent, or less obtrusive.

My use case, during Covid:
Work from home, 3 Macs I use every day; 2 of them personal (desktop and laptop) and 1 work (laptop, docked).

Outside of Covid:
Work from office, 1 Mac, docked, and 2 Macs at home which I may or may not use in a given day, since I'm at a computer in the office all day.

For the purposes of this comment, let's call them all "desktops".

Signal does NOT run on them until I launch it. I use an app launcher so it takes maybe 3 seconds to launch and be usable, no mouse required. This is easier to me than leaving it running on all computers all the time, since I don't use Signal on desktop in an average day.

I only have 1 friend I communicate with regularly on Signal, so far (though I've seen lots of signups lately!) Typically when I hear from him, I have my mobile on me, and respond right away. More infrequently, I fire up Signal on one of my 3 keyboard-equipped computers; either for a longer response, or to attach a photo I have in my photos gallery or online somewhere that's easier than doing it on mobile.

A significant portion of the time I use Signal on desktop, it complains and needs to be re-linked, which requires 5 clicks on iOS if you left it with a conversation opened (open signal, back, my user icon, linked devices, link new device). Once the device is scanned+relinked, the computer pretends like it's never heard of signal before, and requires me to type in my computer name again (the default is never correct). Now it shows up in my Linked Devices as a separate device, as if it's in no way related to the computer with the same name that was previously linked. (In today's example, I last used my laptop 32 days ago, ugh).

If I find myself launching Signal on a desktop, it is because I intend it to be more convenient than typing a long message or inserting media from mobile, and so it's all about which desktop I happen to be using at that precise moment (work, personal, personal laptop) and has nothing to do with the specific media on that particular machine. So it's pretty much a coin toss, or depends on time of day (if I'm in an office). The pestering for re-linking can be thought of as more like happening once every 10 days, which can pretty easily become "almost every time I try to use Signal on desktop", although, in practice, it's probably only about 1 in 10 times on average.

Increasing the re-link interval to 6 months, or, hell, even 2 months, would make this so much less likely to happen. Or alternately, a bigger effort to redesign the re-linking process to make it much smoother.

Thanks for your consideration!

[duck-rh]

Quack,

I keep being hit by this and that's honestly very annoying.

I cannot understand the logic around "For your security, conversation history isn't transfered to new linked devices" since I just validated the device from my phone and in this case that's not a new one, it's a relink. So now I'm linked again with a gap in history and I cannot continue my conversations and I'll have to use another device to do so until the history is filled again. Which means I'm probably going to use this device less and hit the same problem again faster.

Also when this happens my settings are all reset to default. There's absolutely nothing sensitive in the settings but it takes even more time to fix the situation.

So if you could give use more time, send a warning on the phone and avoid clearing all settings that would really smooth things out without the need to change the whole system.

\_o<

[TristanBandat]

Extending the deadline and sending a notification to the linked phone a week and/or a day before un-linking the desktop app would be great.

Syncing the content when a device is re-linked (not new) is a must have. Maybe this could work when the PC is in the same network as the phone. Then the phone could provide the data and there are no additional server resources needed. Also it would be a lot saver than sending the diff over a server!

[dhorkin]

In my case, I use signal on my phone 99% of the time. I only use it on the computer when I'm having a very active conversation and typing on my phone is getting tedious, or when I remember to open Signal so that it syncs messages. My computers that have signal on them are off most of the time, so unlinking happens constantly.

I agree with @TristanBandat. Re-linking a device should transfer messages from your phone. Or at least, you ought to be able to import a phone's backup file on the computer.

[rcontisplk]

Open Signal on phone an hour ago, prompted to update app
Open Signal on computer just now, asked to relink
Relinking again,
Linked: 1/21/21
Last Active: 1/24/21
checks date: 2/23/21. Exactly 30 days. Ugh.
relink, get asked to software update desktop app

It's endless barriers to actual usage.