Proudly nonprofit
Amy Parker on 10 Nov 2026
A few times a year, Signal broadcasts in-app fundraising messages, inviting everyone who uses Signal to make a donation. You may have seen these messages and maybe even made a gift yourself. (If so, thank you, generous friend!) These fundraising “megaphones” help us raise the critical funds we need to operate Signal and continuously improve the app. They also help us raise awareness about the fact that Signal is a 501c3 nonprofit public charity.
Those words are not casual descriptions but formal, legal designations that are made by the US Internal Revenue Service. To become a 501c3 nonprofit, an organization must prove that it exists exclusively for charitable purposes, and to become a public charity, the organization must provide a direct public benefit and have broad public funding. The Signal app is the direct benefit we provide, and our broad public funding comes primarily from user donations.
Back to Backups: A Year in Review
jimio on 28 Sep 2026
Last September, we introduced an optional new way to automatically keep your Signal data safely and securely backed up so that important messages and memories can be easily recovered if something unexpected happens to one of your devices. We’ve been listening to your feedback and working hard on several improvements over the past year.
We hinted at several of these “future plans” when Signal Secure Backups were first announced, and the future is now available on all platforms with the launch of iOS version 8.30 today.
Here’s an overview of everything that’s changed since the initial release.
Introducing Automatic Key Verification
Katherine Yen on 11 Aug 2026
Signal now offers a feature called “automatic key verification” which complements the existing safety number system. Signal is always end-to-end encrypted, and automatic key verification provides an additional, streamlined way to confirm that there’s no unexpected party between you and the other “end” of an end-to-end encrypted session.
The latest update for Signal Android introduces comprehensive support for linked devices. Now you can easily link another Android phone or Android tablet to your Signal account. Thanks to significant interface improvements to better support large devices, your messages will stay in sync across every screen and look good on all of them too.
We’re also expanding linked device support on iOS so you can link an iPhone to your Signal account in addition to our ongoing support for iPads.
Signal Android v8.20 and Signal iOS v8.22 are rolling out now. Feel free to stop here if that’s all you needed to know, but there’s more info ahead if you want to kill some time while you wait for your freshly unboxed second (or third) device to finish charging.
Label yourself
Nina Berman on 19 Mar 2026
We all take on different roles in relation to our friends, neighbors, family members, and colleagues. Keep those different roles clear in your many Signal group chats by using group member labels, now available in the latest versions of Signal for Android, Desktop, and iOS.
Put a pin in it
Nina Berman on 29 Jan 2026
Your most frequently asked questions, dinner reservations, and vacation itineraries are already top of mind. Now they can be top of chat as well.
In the latest version of Signal rolling out now, you can pin your most important messages to the top of your 1-1 and group chats.
Signal Polls: Yes, no, maybe (yes!)
Nina Berman on 19 Nov 2025
Signal Protocol and Post-Quantum Ratchets
Graeme Connell and Rolfe Schmidt on 02 Oct 2025
We are excited to announce a significant advancement in the security of the Signal Protocol: the introduction of the Sparse Post Quantum Ratchet (SPQR). This new ratchet enhances the Signal Protocol’s resilience against future quantum computing threats while maintaining our existing security guarantees of forward secrecy and post-compromise security.
Introducing Signal Secure Backups
jimio on 08 Sep 2025
In the past, if you broke or lost your phone, your Signal message history was gone. This has been a challenge for people whose most important conversations happen on Signal. Think family photos, sweet messages, important documents, or anything else you don’t want to lose forever. This explains why the most common feature request has been backups; a way for people to get Signal messages back even if their phone is lost or damaged.
After careful design and development, we are now starting to roll out secure backups, an opt-in feature. This first phase is available in the latest beta release for Android. This will let us further test this feature in a limited setting, before it rolls out to iOS and Desktop in the near future.
By Default, Signal Doesn't Recall
jlund on 21 May 2025
Signal Desktop now includes support for a new “Screen security” setting that is designed to help prevent your own computer from capturing screenshots of your Signal chats on Windows. This setting is automatically enabled by default in Signal Desktop on Windows 11.
If you’re wondering why we’re only implementing this on Windows right now, it’s because the purpose of this setting is to protect your Signal messages from Microsoft Recall.