Samsung is shutting down messages and pushing the use of Google’s messenger. Are there alternatives? I don’t want to give Google that much personal info to train its AI or to give the regime an avenue to getting my info.
Samsung is shutting down messages and pushing the use of Google’s messenger. Are there alternatives? I don’t want to give Google that much personal info to train its AI or to give the regime an avenue to getting my info.
Signal
has signal gone back to sms or am I still expected to somehow evangelize all my contacts into also using it
If you don’t evangelize all your contacts into using it, you wouldn’t get any benefit from using it for SMS anyway. That’s why they removed SMS support, it confused people about the privacy of SMS messages.
The benefit for me was having an sms client that wasn’t Google’s. Additional privacy with other users that were already onboard with their own volition was a bonus.
You get that using any other SMS app and Signal.
Literally the only gain is having one app instead of two.
and yet here we are discussing alternative SMS apps, no? One might assume people want an app that can do sms to replace the sms app that is going away
Two things happening.
Signal never supported the type of RCS that google messages and iMessage use.
You might have an easier time evangelizing signal if it also did SMS. But I believe them if they said the mixed messaging was more damaging to the UX than the slight advantage it granted.
Especially since it can’t do RCS, since google is a monopolist.
I did have an easier time recommending it back then. It made sense to recommend it. But literally nobody I convinced to use it was interested in continuing to do so when the devs removed a basic function
This is how it was for me and if no one would use it because it didnt even have basic sms anymore there was no point in me using it either.
And alternate apps exist, but combining them confuses people into thinking SMS is secure.
I can’t control other people’s literacy. But I’m not going to use the messaging app that I can’t apply for jobs or talk to customers with
Nobody said you shouldn’t use SMS ever. When you can avoid it though, do.
No we were talking about Signal.
That’s what the comment you responded to mentioned.
It’s also easier to convince others to use signal if there’s an added bonus: you’re already using it
If they’re already using it what are you trying to convince them of?
it’s easier to convince someone to use one app that allows them to continue to talk to other people than 2
and the second one has no one else using it
I wasn’t even aware that they removed sms support. It’s been ages since I used sms.
It was a pretty big bummer. Most people in my circle were using it up until that point. But, you know, the rest of the employed world operates on sms so waddya do
Depends on the country, here almost everyone is in whatsapp. I haven’t been able to ditch that because of work and hobby groups.
oof. my condolences
Does that carry over all the conversations? Does it go to the phone numbers directly? Or, do they need Signal too (like with TeamSpeak or Discord)?
I would recommend you update the post title to clarify you are looking for an app that handles SMS and not just any regular messaging app. Signal requires the other user to also use signal.
Fixed
It is already clear, since both apps mentioned are specifically for handling sms
Yet at the time of my comment, not a single one of the suggestions handled sms
I never figured how to sms through signal, works great as a whatsapp alternative though
It was just a setting in android, you can change your default SMS app to signal but signal stopped supporting SMS so you can’t do that anymore
https://signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/
Sad days. I’ll be giving Fossify messages a try then, thanks
It was removed a few years back