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Signal is working on registration without a phone number. But what form will it take?
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this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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At this point, if it’s on a phone app, it probably doesn’t matter. They have your number.
No, apps (at least on Android) require a specific permission to read your phone number. The phone capabilities of Signal go through their own VoIP service, not your phone.
It's not entirely dystopian (just barely), we have newer messengers like SimpleX and DeltaChat (I/we use Delta) on the up and coming which deliver on all the same e2ee promises as Signal. It's just network effects as usual, getting people to try is the real hurdle.
What they share in common (mostly) is the architecture - they're built natively decentralized, utilizing caching relays with no single source of truth, or device of truth, to be used to create a profile of you like a phone number does. Encryption keys owned by the user and no single servers. Generally this is the Nostr design as well, so we have 3 different teams all focusing on the same natively decentralized architecture patterns.
Don't forget Briar!
Briar fits into it's own niche (operational design), making it a choice for certain activities but not what I would call your general normie chat app. It makes tradeoffs (using the local network, no caching relays, etc.) to increase security posture at the expense of general use. IIRC, Jack Dorsey's BitChat was modeled after the same designs? (which is interesting, because Nostr his other pet doesn't)
Simplex is a dog though compared to Signal.
I haven't tried SimpleX yet, as they can't share the same profile to multiple devices (it's explained in detail in the FAQ) which makes it a normie usability deal killer. I've heard it has really bad battery life on mobile too, but that's just reading random comments. Right now we're using Delta (and running a relay) and it's just fine.
Is any of these apps good for phone calls or video calls, or just text messages?
At this rate Canada would probably ban anything they can't get records from eventually if it got popular enough. I hate this timeline.
And Canada is supposed to be “the good guys”.
no good guys out there as state actors, some are the "lesser evil" and we all have to live somewhere
They have great PR, but other than that no, unfortunately
I started self-hosting xmpp recently, and the calls work perfectly! You don't need to self-host either, there are plenty of public servers.
I tried XMPP but could not find a client that let me have a "video call" where I could share my screen without also needing a webcam. Or even have a video call where not everyone is forced to have a video flux. As far as I can tell an audio call cannot be turned into a video call for 1 streamer.
Like in Discord where one want to share its screen while playing. XNPP was my biggest hope to replace Discord with my friend but I either did not find the correct client or the ecosystem is not mature enough (or oriented in the direction I expected).
Yeah, screensharing is not a thing in most clients, but I think it's a matter of time (years?) before it's properly implemented. In the meantime, you can use jitsi meet? Not sure if it covers your use case. I'll just copy this reddit comment, which has some good info:
Arcane chat (a delta chat client) offers video/audio calls as well
Delta has it native.
Must be a newish update.
I think it is. I don't remember seeing it before.
The arcane chat dev is a fucking shit head so knowing delta chat has video chat as well will definitely make me go back to it.
It's been in DC for a few versions now, we've used a combination of: macOS desktop, Android mobile, Linux desktop, iOS Mobile - and haven't had problems more than usual getting apps access to the cam/mic on macOS.
They just dropped DC 2.57.0, it hit F-Droid and Arch repos in my morning updates. An update to the relay code was also dropped, 1.12.0, for relay operators.
Thanks!