Why do you use the messaging app you do? You’ve certainly got enough options to choose from, but what makes each stand out? For Signal, that’s long been the app’s commitment to putting privacy first and foremost. That starts with robust end-to-end encryption, but there’s much more going on here — including what happens to your messages once they reach their recipient. Signal’s been giving users the ability to make their messages auto-delete for a while, and now a new change hopes to make this ability lower-effort and more accessible than ever before.
The name of the game here is “defaults.” Previously, you’d have to manually set your messages to auto-delete on a conversation-by-conversation basis. While that was a functional solution, it also spelled a lot of extra work, to say nothing of the risk that you’d accidentally forget to enable it.
Going forward, you can now choose to have ephemeral messaging enabled by default. More than that, users have full control over just how long they want their messages to last, and you can set expiration times ranging from seconds to days.
As Signal wisely points out, you shouldn’t place too much faith in the belief that your messages will be gone for good — someone could always take a picture before they vanish, if so inclined — but this still sounds like a really good step in the right direction, giving users as much control over their messaging as possible.
