alt Hacker NewsHow are you framing this? It’s an Electron app so it exists but doesn’t integrate or perform great. Last I recall you still were required to provide a SIM to sign up & you needed an iOS or Android primary device to even use the desktop client. Can you use a standalone, fast desktop application like you can these other protocols? I would say no, so “support” has shades of gray to it.
This is how I got kicked off LINE… they had a Chromium app that I could use tethered to an app, they disabled support for LINE Lite (which had light/dark theme, E2EE, texting, voice/video calls, debatable trackers (Firebase), even stickers & sending a location @ 8MiB instead of 200MiB+ of the “heavy app”), I refused to “upgrade” as it was a downgrade to me, & since I was no longer registered with a “primary” device, I was booted from the network. I don’t think I want these mobile-duopoly-required apps to be my primary means of communication with folks—especially now that my primary phone isn’t Apple or Google (luckily Open Whisper lets WhisperFish exist).
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The Signal desktop app works fine, but you are right, it is still tied to a mobile account and a phone number. This is the main downside to Signal. I read that the Molly fork will support multiple accounts and a self hostable server. It probably won't be federated, but that is not really a problem when you can use multiple accounts and avoids a lot of headaches that come with federation.
> but doesn’t integrate or perform great.
Curious what you mean by this. I use the Signal Desktop app. It does what it's supposed to - send and receive messages in a timely way with no lag.
What poor performance are you seeing? What doesn't integrate?
The other downside of the Desktop is that it requires periodic re-verification with the device you used to set it up. Desktop users are definitely second class citizens in the Signal ecosystem.