I have used Signal for… Many years at this point. I don’t even remember when I started. I think it is amazing for privacy concerns. They however are doing away with SMS support which means you can only text people who also have Signal. They are changing this because they want to be more private and secure. This is going to make my phone get a bit messy. I don’t want to move away from it but I may have to.
That being said, what alternatives are that that are privacy forward and support SMS?
I am assuming the forks will lose their SMS capabilities as well then.
As far as I know, the only other option like this is Session but I am not entirely sure they support SMS. It is a great messenger though, none the less.
Session doesn’t support SMS unfortunately. I have looked into this already. Telegram is one that some people recommend but I personally don’t because of privacy seasons, oddly enough. I am sticking with Signal for the time being. I will have to just convince some people to download and use the app like they used to with Skype.
I’m not sure what to think here. I’ve never been able to use Signal to send a message to someone who did not also have Signal. I had no idea that Signal ever supported SMS. I run Signal on an iPhone and three Macs. What am I missing here?
Check out https://getconfide.com/. I’m not sure about SMS but it does support iMessage.
Confide’s iMessage plugin can erase your iMessages during any conversation. You can compose and send self-destructive messages via iMessage.
Other than that it’s probably overkill, compared to signal, even with the free version you can’t take screenshots.
I found out about this from my lawyer who told me that he uses Confide to communicate with some of his clients. 
I have it on my desktop and phone. On my phone I use it as my primary messenger which forces all my texts to go through it. This is what they will no longer support. The desktop app never supported it unless the other person you were messaging uses Signal as well.
That’s cool. I never knew Signal supported SMS forwarding. 
Thanks for sharing that. I was not sure. I couldn’t find anything about it on their main site. I thought they may have had it at one point but I guess not.
If you don’t mind paying, Pulse offers SMS support for $10 a month I believe it is. Not a big deal if you don’t already pay a pricey phone bill I suppose.
Yeah it is unfortunate as well because overall, I think it is a good service just not as useful for me and many others as Signal. I am just sticking with it. I don’t want to pay for something like that right now. Trying to budget things as is!
Yeah that is good for privacy, especially for a lawyer I’d say! But a bit too much for what I would need. Plus, I tend to keep my conversations for a bit before clearing them. I may just have to stick with it and try to get other people to use it. Then everyone else will have to go through my default app.
I have looked the last several days and have not found a free solution. I found some good paid ones but even those didn’t match Signal for me.
So when is this meant to be happening?
I found the blog post about it here: Signal >> Blog >> Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)
But it doesn’t actually say when they are removing the support. Kind of bummed out about it because it seems like no other messaging apps offer something like this, at least not one I would trust. Most of the big ones are owned by places like Facebook and Amazon. No thanks!
They haven’t announced anything that I am aware in terms of a date in which this will be happening. I would imagine this serves as an early warning so people know - that way when they do it, it will likely be set only a few days prior to it happening.
I thought I should give this an update.
I was notified on my phone that messaging will not be available soon for people thought aren’t messaging through the app on both ends. This was a few days ago so I am assuming they are planning on ending it this month.
I forgot about this. I never found an alternative either. It is looking like I am going to end up using the stock messenger app on my phone for people who don’t want to use signal. I get why they are doing this though, even though it is going to be a pain in the butt for me lol
Also, what is this story nonsense? It popped up today on my desktop app.
Thanks for updating this.
I must have overlooked the notification cause I did not see it when it came in. I went back in one of my chat logs and I do see it now, it was sent on February 5th. I wish they would just give us a date. Would make it easier to be prepared. I have a feeling it might just get cut off and I will be without messages and not even know it.