… and I can’t even continue the chat from my phone.

        • rdri@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          That’s a very bad way to look at things. Just because I have gigabytes of memory doesn’t mean I want to use unoptimized software.

          • baatliwala@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            And your way to look at things that “all apps must be 20 mb or less otherwise they are unoptimised” is better because?

            • rdri@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              Because optimized software is better for industry, people, and environment. Also seeing that some menu or window is not an html page but a native element makes my headache go away because I value my CPU cycles (seeing a cursor doesn’t lag when some complex page is displayed should not be considered a weird fetish) and like it when things don’t do stupid unnecessary stuff both visually and under the hood.

              And it could be even less than that depending on specifics.

        • thepreciousboar@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          If developers optimized their apps, we could have phones that are 10x faster than 10 yeara ago. Instead they are the same speed and the same amount of apps fit in the bigger storage, because developers are lazy and use heavy, unoptimized technologies that use 10x the resources

    • Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      And that’s also a lot for an app that doesn’t have that many binary assets like images or videos. I do wonder what makes up most of these sizes. I see other apps that are arguably more complicated - like AntennaPod - using under 40MB; So I guess it has to do with actual native apps vs cross platform ones.

  • irotsoma@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Yeah, I’ve been having a lot of issues with Electron which is basically a browser emulator. It has gotten huge, so applications using it have gotten out of control in size. I get that it’s a quick way to build a cross platform application, but there really needs to either be a better way to distribute it that is more modular, or people need to start building on better cross platform front-end systems.

    • alyth@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      i am doing a full system upgrade and something wants to build chromium from source. i let it run in the background and cloning the repository alone has downloaded 33GB wtf 😭

      • irotsoma@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Yeah, I had to move away from Arch Linux because lots of apps you have to build and Electron was one of the biggest culprits for using tons of disk space and time because it builds Chromium in its entirety from source. Electron is a great way to shift the cost of cross platform development from you to your customers.

    • lengau@midwest.socialEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      It’s because it’s an electron app. So in addition to the chat app itself, it also includes a full Chromium runtime. Worse still, the Electron architecture doesn’t really lend itself towards reusing electron itself; this means you might have several copies of the same version of electron on your machine for various apps.

      People complain about the sizes of things like flatpaks and snaps, but tbh the whole architecture of applications is like this these days. Ironically, flatpaks and snaps could help with this because their formats can work decently with filesystem level deduplication.

      • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Hey now, the three React Native for Windows apps would be very offended if they were stable enough to read text input.

  • philpo@feddit.deEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    That’s why I am so happy that I switched to Matrix - selfhosted with Signal and WhatsApp Bridges(amongst others) and now I only need to keep one App on our mobiles, Notebooks,desktop,etc. but I can still communicate with everyone. (we have have a few mixed groups now)

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Is Matrix another one of those apps that when you click on a download link it takes you to a page full of tech jargon shit like “nightly signed beta configs here, just unjibble the .trag file and recombobulate with a python scrab to mambo directory: AAATGFHHOLLLM56888NGAAA.tar.gz” ?

      Or is it like an app normal people can use?

      • FractalsInfinite@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        It’s website seems to have had a graphic designer look over it. It seems to do the best of both worlds where you can download the default user friendly client or choose to go down the jargon route if you want to.

        • discount_door_garlic@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          as a big proponent of FOSS I see where you’re coming from - but the reality will always be that apps which have a significant learning curve to even install are obviously hugely off-putting to the majority of users. While the rest of us might be comfortable cloning a repository and building from a tar file, expecting the average person who wants to talk with friends and family to jump through those kind of hoops is exactly what has held back wider adoption of better standards.

          Things like flatpacks and snaps have gone a long way to making this less daunting, but when matrix isn’t a ‘self-hosted decentralised chat’, it’s a *‘version of whatsapp that isn’t always online, and i don’t know where to download it and have to learn what the terminal is to even get it on my laptop’ * - we can’t be surprised people stick with the less secure, private, easy options. That’s why I’m a big advocate of signal - it’s not perfect and part of me wishes it was matrix or threema or one of the other standards, but getting people comfortable with the idea of free and open source software, while making it as simple for them to install on their phone or computer as anything meta makes is a really good first step - in the meantime, it’s up to us in the wider community to make the other solutions more intuitive, simple, secure, and trust that if a good enough job is done of that - they will come.

      • Lazycog@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Of course not,

        with the new encapsulator all you need is to reconfigure your turbomutator to allow electrostabilizer executable to directly read instructions from your self-hosted AI model.

        Who even uses python to scrab anymore? Install podman dude.

          • Darth_Mew@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            elitist because I said they don’t want to read? lol ok … you weirdos get so butthurt over a simple statement

            • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              Not everyone has the ability or spare time to become skilled in every field. Calling them lazy and illiterate for not learning a complicated thing (when they may already be learning some other complex subject) is kinda the definition of elitism.

              • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                3 months ago

                Tech bros are so fucking bad about this shit. Doctors too. I’m not an idiot, I fix big industrial machinery for a living, I can rewire your whole house up to code, but I don’t work in tech so I don’t know what the fuck a flapjack api is or whatever.

                • Darth_Mew@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  0·
                  3 months ago

                  tech bro? wtf does that even mean. maybe stop crying that cOmpUteRs ArE hArD and use your brain

    • ealoe@ani.socialEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      I can switch to Matrix and talk to the two other users on this platform! Can’t wait!

      • alyth@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        I’ll give you a little anecdote. I joined a casual server on Matrix recently. Two minutes into the conversation, it turns out the person I was talking to is installing some Linux stuff and watching an episode of classic Doctor Who. That’s two of my biggest interests right there that we immediately connected over. If there are only two users on Matrix, they’re the only two I need.

      • philpo@feddit.deEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Yeah, 115 Million users atm. And as I said - you can easily bridge it to other services so you only use Matrix but communicate with others.

    • alyth@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Your post encouraged me to self host Matrix ^^ That’ll be a nice project for the next rainy day

      • philpo@feddit.deEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Thanks,welcome to the club! It can be a bit “tricky” at times (and I use a container manager,cloudron, meanwhile as I got too deep into the rabbit hole and now host too many things to maintain them myself) but once you get it set up it’s rock solid.

        And I am really optimistic for Element X/Matrix 2.0.

        It’s a great standard.

        • alyth@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Gonna repeat what I said to Mikina - Thank you for sharing your setup, this kind of information is always extremely valuable <3

      • Mikina@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        I self-hosted it few months ago, and it’s actually surprisingly easy! Someone has made an Ansible script for Matrix with Element and some bridges, that (at least a month ago, IaaC tends to be pretty fragile) worked out of the box on a first try. I just set up some config values (mostly about enabling bridges I want) based on their amazing documentation, and then ran it once and everything is working so far. I even updated it several times already, and every time it was smooth, and it was basically just running a single ansible command. Their documentation is pretty well written, and with my basic cloud, IT and Linux knowledge I had no issues with following it. All you need to know is how to set up cloud VM, get a domain and set DNS, and set up SSH keys to access the server.

        In total it took me about two hours in total, from when I decided “I’m setting up Matrix tonight” without any prior knowledge, looking up my options and finding the ansible script, setting up cloud and getting Matrix up and running.

        I’m renting a VM on Hetzner for like 6$ per month, and it worked without issues so far. I use it for Discord and Messenger, although the Meta bridge does have some problems, for example I didn’t figure out how to message someone with whom I haven’t had a conversation since I set up the bridge, since only then it creates the room for it. But that can be solved by keeping the Messenger app or usign the browser to send a first message, and it immediately shows in your Matrix bridge (and stays there forever).

        • alyth@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Thank you for sharing your setup, this kind of information is always extremely valuable <3

  • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Signal’s desktop app is as horrendously unusably bad as the project as a whole is good, tbh.

    It’s no wonder people prefer stuff like Telegram. It has native apps and all. Or can be used in a browser. Meanwhile Signal is only used in a browser, but you have to download it and it fucks up font scaling and it shits the bed on font antialiasing and it can’t even get UI design consistent with the OS it’s running on and it won’t even use the OS emoji font.

    Let’s not even mention how you still cannot use Signal on a tablet.

    • PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.ukEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Signal’s desktop app is as horrendously unusably bad

      I think this is a bit dramatic. I’ve been using it for years, no problems.

      • tempest@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Care to elaborate?

        I use the app from the AUR and I don’t think I’ve had a single problem in 3 years.

    • voxel@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      telegram has an “advantage” of not having e2e encryption by default, which makes stuff like sync much easier as chats are fully stored on the server (encrypted with your user password).

      and if you enable encryption (aka start a secret chat), the chat will only exist on the device you started it on and stop getting synced

    • amelia@feddit.deEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      And anytime you clicked on a link or image in the chat, you’ll have to click into the message field again (or press Ctrl+t) to be able to type a reply. I don’t understand how this absolutely infuriating thing hasn’t been fixed in years. Is nobody bothered by this? I want to be able to alt+tab into signal and just start typing ffs.

  • MeanEYE@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Well dooh, you installed Chrome with it. Add to that their application and there you have it.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Sadly, it’s the only way I can contact someone to buy a decent quantity of weed in this state. I get less even if I go to a state where it’s legal and I pay more.

  • Vilian@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    the solution could be deduplication, not sure if microsoft store has it, or windows supports it, this help with the size, bot not ram usage

  • VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    For the most part, I don’t care about App Size. Storage is cheap. What I miss with the Signal Desktop App is the option to save everything in an encrypted container.

    • kostas@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Wouldn’t having full disk encryption achieve most of the benefits of that? In case of someone having access to your unlocked machine what is stopping them from launching the app and looking though it?

      • VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Yes, full disk encryption helps against intruders with device access, but not against the files being indexed by other application. My phone is encrypted, but I still use a signal client that is encrypted again.

        • kostas@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Hm, but wouldn’t such an application be malicious by default? Having protection against attackers on your device seems of out scope for a messaging application, at that point I would consider something like Tails. Though this may be a rare case when moving to an appimage could help matters.

          • VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            Yes and no. I personally would like to be asked permission for such behaviour, but a gallery application, for example, could have legitimate reasons to index all photos on your system. I personally prefer to manually set the folders it is supposed to index, but that doesn’t seem to be a generally accepted paradigm.

            In general, I see why you need to trust that a system your app runs on is uncompromised to a a certain degree, but measures to potentially limit harm in case it is still seem sensible, especially for an app with a focus on privacy and security.

            • kostas@lemm.eeEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              We set the threshold of sensible protections provided by the app (signal) itself differently.

              On desktop having a gallery app, as you say, or running an application like windirstat for example I expect the user to understand that anything stored on device can be “seen” by the app and that, if they dont trust it, having sensitive files deleted or sandboxed might be prudent. Messages are stored at least somewhat encrypted (albeit with the key in a config file) so a random (non targeted/malicious) scan would gt blobs there.

              On mobile due to how opaque the os is I am thankful for the extra encyption and I would consider it a much more critical flaw. On desktop less so. Still I appreciate your point of view and a passkey to encrypt at least messages on the desktop app would be a welcome addition.

        • Natanael@slrpnk.netEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Am encrypted container doesn’t help if the directory is mounted and accessible or if the key is in plaintext. Also doesn’t help if the process isn’t isolated. You need a bunch of extra measures like using the OS keystore set to only allow the correct program to retrieve the key, keeping secrets only in process memory, etc.

          Tldr it’s a lot of work to do it right. If you do it the simple way like throwing it all in SQLite with encryption active you still leak metadata.

          • VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            I have never worked on a properly hardened desktop app, so I don’t have much of a perspective on that, and can definitely see that it might not be worthwhile for the signal team.

            I would appreciate some level of encryption, thinking that it might help with less targeted attacks. I’d also appreciate a Web client, like Threema’s with none permanent sessions. But all that’s, as you’d say in German, “Meckern auf hohem Niveau”, especially since I’m not currently contributing to Signal.

  • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    This is why I moved to Telegram. Idk if it’s actually native, but often feels much more so, and less phone-centric than Signal which requires weird auth rituals involving the phone.

      • rdri@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Signal is not an alternative to telegram and vice versa. Telegram has too many public communication features that people often use. The nature of signal will prevent it from having similar features.

      • 0x30507DE@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Personally, I’m a big fan of XMPP, due to the inherent resiliency in being decentralized/federated, and due to the security provided by OMEMO (based on signal’s algorithm). Don’t have to worry about third-parties messing with my data if it stays on my server that’s in my house.

      • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        People want a chat app. If your secure chat app sucks as a chat app, it doesn’t matter how secure it is. It failed the primary use case it was meant to be developed for.

        But keep in mind, Signal’s nature is no excuse to have shitty app implementations. In particular to have desktop apps as second-class citizens (and tablets as exterminated not-citizens). You can be a secure chat app. Signal got the secure part done, they’re just struggling with the chat app part.