<story><title>Signal Desktop is corrupting its database</title><url>https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/4513</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>primeos</author><text>This whole thing is especially painful&amp;#x2F;annoying since they neither support backing up the database nor syncing&amp;#x2F;importing old messages from the phone. So if this happens there&amp;#x27;s no known&amp;#x2F;reliable way to recover (even though the data is still on the phone).&lt;p&gt;(In theory it should be possible to recover from this and I can still access my sqlcipher database manually but Electron and the stateful Signal protocol make it extremely difficult so I gave up. Multiple backups of the whole ~&amp;#x2F;.config&amp;#x2F;Signal directory didn&amp;#x27;t help either.)&lt;p&gt;(See: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;signalapp&amp;#x2F;Signal-Desktop&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;4513#issuecomment-756830788&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;signalapp&amp;#x2F;Signal-Desktop&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;4513#issu...&lt;/a&gt; )</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>satysin</author><text>Yes and this has been my biggest complaint for literally &lt;i&gt;years&lt;/i&gt; but whenever I say &amp;quot;Signal needs a top tier backup system asap&amp;quot; I get moaned at with responses like &amp;quot;Signal is a messaging app not email, if you want to backup a message just do that one message.&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Why would you want a &lt;i&gt;whole&lt;/i&gt; conversation backup?!&amp;quot; as if I am some weirdo for wanting to have a backup.&lt;p&gt;Does my fucking head in. Yes Signal is about security but that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean it can&amp;#x27;t have a functional backup feature!  Honestly it needs to be priority number one imho.&lt;p&gt;This bug shows just how important backups and importing conversations are. Whenever I setup Signal on a new system I &lt;i&gt;hate&lt;/i&gt; when I see the message &amp;quot;For your security, conversation history isn&amp;#x27;t transferred to new linked devices.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Signal doesn&amp;#x27;t (or at least shouldn&amp;#x27;t) get to decide what happens here. If I am having to re-register because of a Signal failure my security is not effected by importing the conversation history as it was there two minutes ago before they corrupted the database. At the very least they should make it an option even if it is disabled by default.&lt;p&gt;Apologies for the ranty nature of this comment but I am fed up with this absolutely pathetic denial that backups are important because it is &amp;quot;just a messaging app&amp;quot;. AHHH!&lt;p&gt;Edit: See this reply from when I complained about the lack of backup a month ago &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=25687851&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=25687851&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Signal Desktop is corrupting its database</title><url>https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/4513</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>primeos</author><text>This whole thing is especially painful&amp;#x2F;annoying since they neither support backing up the database nor syncing&amp;#x2F;importing old messages from the phone. So if this happens there&amp;#x27;s no known&amp;#x2F;reliable way to recover (even though the data is still on the phone).&lt;p&gt;(In theory it should be possible to recover from this and I can still access my sqlcipher database manually but Electron and the stateful Signal protocol make it extremely difficult so I gave up. Multiple backups of the whole ~&amp;#x2F;.config&amp;#x2F;Signal directory didn&amp;#x27;t help either.)&lt;p&gt;(See: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;signalapp&amp;#x2F;Signal-Desktop&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;4513#issuecomment-756830788&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;signalapp&amp;#x2F;Signal-Desktop&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;4513#issu...&lt;/a&gt; )</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ancarda</author><text>&amp;gt;they neither support backing up the database nor syncing&amp;#x2F;importing old messages from the phone&lt;p&gt;Why Signal doesn&amp;#x27;t support this is beyond me. I can basically only use it for scenarios where I don&amp;#x27;t want any chat history, which just isn&amp;#x27;t that common.</text></comment>