I also use both extensively and I agree, Telegram has the best UX of any messaging app. The desktop app is QT I think so it feels very snappy compared to Signal's electron app.
Signal's iOS app is a native Swift/UIKit app and open source however, so I'd encourage you to report any bugs or issues you find: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS
Can anyone shed light on where the complexity is coming from? Even 360kloc for a chat client seems excessive - its original size, 1.7Mloc, is hard to accept. How does it break down - e.g. 120kloc UI, 120kloc networking/data, and 120kloc other?
(For comparison I dl'd https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS and ran cloc. It's about 400kloc of Swift, so I guess it's in the ballpark. I just wouldn't have guessed it was so big, and I'd like to know why.)
Valid question, which I don't have the answer for, but since Signal is open-source [1][2] it's open to lot of analysis. Since we haven't heard anything damaging so far, I'm guessing it's _secure enough_.
> You don't compare builds because you probably don't actually have sources
I dont use Signal myself so I’m not inclined to put in the work for that but just wanted to point out that given what you said and the fact that Signal is open source [0] it should then be possible to figure out how they do transfers and adapt that code in order to sync data from Signal on iOS onto your computer. Unless it ties into some feature of iOS itself that provides data transfer between phones in which case it will be more difficult to work out.
I never realized signal code was available open source... so in theory one could “build” then load the software via developer tools (assuming you have an iOS dev account).
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS
Are there any “certs”/keys you would need to talk to your contacts?
I really want to use Signal but having a centralized server and requiring my phone number turn me off. I'd love to be able to self-build the iOS [0] and desktop [1] apps, and self-host the server [2]. Has anyone tried any of that, are any of them even possible?
[0]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS