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Signal on two different grapheneos profiles. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by guymontag@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I'm trying to use signal on two profiles of my grapheneos phone. I'm already aware signal only allows one device per account, so I've been trying to use the Molly fork, which allows me to connect as a linked device. However, when I switch profiles and try to link it just doesn't work. Does anyone have any solutions? This is really important to me.

EDIT: for anyone interested this is the only possible solution without rooting. Since grapheneos resets your internet after every profile switch it's not possible to do this with internet. You must have a sim card with cell data. Once you toggle off your wifi and vpn, the whole process should work fine. (You still need another device to take a photo of the qr code with). Also the qr code expires so be quick. Also official signal app doesn't seem to work, so I would use Molly.

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[–] enchanted@lemmy.world -4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Signal allows just 1 device at a time, and you need to register by phone number. Unless you use their tablet mode which stores data on server.. Maybe check out other projects without such requirement?

Even with rooting (to the dismay of GrapheneOS PR team, so sad), Signal will not backup or restore properly since it uses Strongbox, so you cannot clone it amongst profiles or users. Thank the Titan chip for that. Legit a good thing, except it your case.

Just don't use Signal.

[–] LytiaNP@lemmy.today 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Bad advice. Signal has its drawbacks, and yet you managed to avoid listing all but one of them. Impressive.

Signal has released an update recently that allows multiple devices (up to 10 I believe). Yes you still need a phone number, but newer commits suggest that is soon to change. Signal has local backups on android, and I haven't heard of any issues restoring from them. Signal is far from perfect, but they are very trusted, battle tested, and overall a better service than what most people are using anyways. By all means, if you have a better service that works for you, go for it, but advising against using signal outright with no alternative is kinda weird.

[–] enchanted@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Restoring a local Signal backup doesn't let you use the same profile on multiple accounts, it forces older profiles to deregister. Try it.

[–] LytiaNP@lemmy.today 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Because you can't run multiple accounts at once? Either I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, or you're missing the point of a signal backup.

OP is referring to the GrapheneOS feature, well really the android feature heavily enhanced by GrapheneOS, that allows you to run the OS as another user with their own apps and files. OP is asking for help running signal (Molly) in both profile A and profile B as one account. This is technically possible but realistically infeasible because of the way profile switching works on android. I explained why in a different comment.