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Comment by eins1234 | Hacker News Reader

One thing on my wishlist for Signal that's curiously still missing is the lack of a Web app.

On desktop at least, I'm generally of the position that messaging apps should need no capability outside of what's available in my browser (i.e. sending notifications), so when the option is available that's the one I tend to go for (usually have my commonly used ones sitting around in a pinned tab).

Pretty much every chat app out there today (including WhatsApp) has a web app. Anyone know why Signal doesn't? Is it just a prioritization/lack of resources thing?

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IIRC Signal doesn't have a web app for security reasons. With a iOS/Android/Desktop app, you can verify the checksum of the binary against what signal provides.

But with a web app you redownload the application everytime which means you'd have to recheck that checksum every time you use the app. I guess that WhatsApp, Discord, et al have decided that this is a reasonable risk. But the privacy oriented Signal team disagrees.

I don't think it's a prioritization issue, the desktop app is currently running via electron which means it's effectively a web app already.

No, you can't verify the checksum; it downloads and runs new code without asking.

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/4578

Wow... I was totally convinced by the security argument until I read through this thread, which completely obsoletes that premise. It's no different from a PWA (like WhatsApp) in its update behavior then.

Something being Electron doesn't mean it's ready to be a web app it means the UI is web and the rest of the app is somewhere between "the standard web sandbox" and "a native app" in terms of what it has access to do.

They have a desktop app that is working very well, much better than the WhatsApp web app.

Or do you have a different use case?

They don’t store messages in the cloud. The desktop app benefits from being able to store them locally. The same could be said of a web app but I’m sure browsers impose some extra limitations.

Signal has a desktop application that works across all platforms. Not sure why it isn't a web application though.

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