Increase attachment file size limits #2907
Comments
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The current file size limits and image resizing are optimized for people on mobile devices, on mobile networks. Maybe you could tell us more about your specific use cases? |
scottnonnenberg-signal
changed the title
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Also, I notice that you're referring specifically to Android. This is the place to file Android bugs: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues |
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I'd love to.
Firstly, the most frequent use case would be your average Whatsapp,
Snapchat, YouTube user accustomed to sharing videos without size
limits. They have no idea what file sizes are or what file formats
are. They have no idea what encryption is or even what Signal is, until
I tell them. They typically don't care about security. They care
merely about convenience. In this respect, Signal is more difficult and
less attractive to use. I want to reverse this while maintaining
Signal's end-to-end capability. The majority of people I know are not
software engineers (like me) and they are not computer literate. They
use whatever their friends are using because of features (e.g.
Telegram's stickers). These users also share big files through
companies like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc... I'm getting people
to stop relying on these types of social media companies in order to
keep companies and governments from storing and exploiting everything
they transmit to one another.
My second use case would be more informed users. I'm trying to send
video previews to a client, whom I got to use Signal just to talk to me,
but I was unable because of attachment limits. I'm doing video
walkthroughs for real estate. He's typically using his cell phone so
size limits are a concern, but this could alleviated by sending an icon
that says "press to download" the large attachment so they can pick and
choose when to download. If a download is started, they should have the
option to pause the download while still receiving other messages.
…On 11/15/2018 7:34 PM, Scott Nonnenberg wrote:
The current file size limits and image resizing are optimized for
people on mobile devices, on mobile networks. Maybe you could tell us
more about your specific use cases?
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While I'm using Android, I also use the Windows client and most of my friends use the iOS version. This would apply to all versions please. |
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Essentially just echoing what MenooMeow has said; for context I'm one of those barely computer-literate people they've mentioned, looking for a non-Facebook messenger service now WhatsApp's going full darkside. I suspect there will be quite a few people like me looking to switch right now, but it's hard enough convincing my contacts to abandon WhatsApp in favour of a new app even if Signal lets them do everything WhatsApp could. If it doesn't let them send large video files, they'll be even more likely to stick with the devil they know. |
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All: It would be useful if you gave us some specific recommendations for how big things should be? 200MB, twice our current limit? 500MB? More? |
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Purely from a new user's perspective, I was surprised to find any limit at all. And I think that'd be the point of view of many new users coming from WhatsApp. However I appreciate there are likely technical reasons for a hard limit, so the possibly unhelpful answer would be 'as large as we can get away with'. But for a more specific answer, it feels like 200-300MB would at least allow a couple of minutes' video to be sent. Anecdotally, it's rare I want to send more than that. |
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If it helps to have a basis for comparison, the limit on telegram is 1.5GB
…On Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 5:08 AM TheHiddenPaw ***@***.*** wrote:
Purely from a new user's perspective, I was surprised to find any limit at
all. And I think that'd be the point of view of many new user's coming from
WhatsApp.
However I appreciate there are likely technical reasons for a hard limit,
so the possibly unhelpful answer would be 'as large as we can get away
with'. But for a more specific answer, it feels like 200-300MB would at
least allow a couple of minutes' video to be sent. Anecdotally, it's rare I
want to send more than that.
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Ideally there should be a practically unlimited file size transfers. I use the desktop client extensively and I would love to be able to transfer large files using Signal. It would certainly make a huge business case for it to be used in small businesses. For example, I do side work as a graphic artist. I sometimes need to send files > 1GB in size but I have to resort to using either Telegram or (gulp) Dropbox, if my clients have their own accounts. This would be a big deal for those of us who can't afford to line the pockets of Dropbox and/or are ideologically opposed to non-private file sharing. The other day I took some video with my cellphone and it exceeded 1.5 GB. Obviously the issue with sending large files is you would need to have sender and receiver controls over download start/pause/resume/cancel. Possible bug: I was sending photos to a friend the other day.. about 30 total... it started failing to send after about 25% of them. No matter how many times I did "retry", it instantly failed during retry. Interestingly, I went to the last file that failed to send, did retry, and it sent.... so retry in reverse order started working. |
Also, for pictures being sent, Signal should immediately present the sender the option to send a scaled down image (what it currently does) or the option to send the original, unmodified, un-scaled, un-recompressed image. Use case: my mom is sending me photos of the renovation done at her house. She is 72 yrs old and doesn't even grasp the concept of what Signal is vs. the phone's main screen. She thinks that she has to use Signal to take pictures! Anyways... the issue is that I need her to send me the original un-scaled photos so that I can inspect the work she's taking pictures of. The scaled versions are useless for this purpose. She uses an iPhone and I have an Android phone. I can't figure out how to send the unscaled images from her to me and I wouldn't have a clue how to explain it to her. |
I totally agree. I love Signal and I advertise it to everyone as the only secure program out there but most are stuck on WhatsApp or other more popular messaging programs. While I never support making a program less secure, I think Signal needs to get some new features such as group messaging (securely) and message sharing across a phone/tablet/computer. Lastly, it needs to drop the need to use cell phone numbers as the primary key for one's account. Your friends should be able to find you using account names and perhaps phone numbers or email addresses. |
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@MenooMeow Thanks for spending the time to give us feedback. That issue where you weren't able to send images - next time please send us a debug log. It would have the specific error, and would help us prevent that from happening in the future - but the information only lasts a couple days. Also, Signal does support group messaging. Perhaps you haven't found the way to create a group in the app? |
Thanks for pointing this out. I didn't notice it because it wasn't immediately obvious in the desktop version, which is what I primarily use. I created a test group on the Android app and it appeared on the desktop. |
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I would like to echo pretty much all of MenooMeow's points made above. I'm extremely motivated to try and get as many people as possible to switch over to Signal precisely for all the privacy reasons mentioned above, and so that we're not providing our entire digital life as a money making opportunity for rapacious companies. Moreover, the fact that Signal is natively cross-platform is a joy -- I use Linux exclusively. Unfortunately, Signal is still a bit short of prime-time. Current issues for me (as similar to those mentioned in numerous threads here on GitHub):
It's a somewhat frustrating situation as I am incredibly keen for Signal to succeed and it seems to be most of the way there, but it still too unreliable to trust for serious dependable use just yet. Ignoring the privacy issues, for example, LINE messenger when used under Windows provided a far superior experience with no issues. The client was extremely fast even with a huge number of messages, easily facilitated sending all sorts of media files, and unlike WhatsApp works just fine without having your phone switched on. It claims to be end-to-end encrypted, though how true that actually is is unknown. Unfortunately it has no native Linux client, so running it under Linux means running using Wine. However, even running under Wine it still works more effectively than Signal at present does! Additionally, one major bonus of LINE was the fact that you have a user ID, which means you don't have to publicly give out your phone number in order for people to message you. The biggest missing feature of Signal is the inability to be able to use an alias for your identity, and be forced into providing a phone number. Really, the entire credential system should be completely separated from a mobile phone number, allowing people even without a mobile to sign up and use it. Having to give out/provide a mobile number seems a very backward way of private messaging in this era, instead you should be able to set up a number of various aliases (lets say up to 10, for example), with the ability to block/revoke/delete aliases as needed. This way you could keep new contacts in a trust level, and elevate them later on. You could provide a public alias you could put on a website; if it started getting spam or undesirable messages, you could either block the individuals concerned, or if necessary entirely delete or change the alias thus preventing any and all future messages to that alias ever going anywhere/getting through to you. This would be an ideal scenario/use-case. I will keep persevering with Signal as I believe in the project, and I'm very grateful for what you've so far provided. Hopefully the remaining issues will be fixed so that in the coming months it can be used as a full and complete drop-in replacement for FB messenger/WhatsApp/LINE and all the rest. It's not yet there, however. Hopefully it will be before the end of 2019! :-) I'm using version 1.21.2 on this computer, and on my other laptop whatever the latest version in the Arch repository as of Feb 21st. Thanks. |
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Just tried to send a video on Signal and was very surprised when a <1 minute clip I recorded wouldn't send, immediately found myself here. I would recommend a size compatible with recording a sending a video... but I get the feeling most clients compress video before sending it. My tiny clip was 138 MB which seems entirely excessive for sharing with my friends, but that's just what my default camera settings produced. I don't know much about it but I've read this thread and I feel that lifting the limit and options for compression are the way to go. I have other opinions on the tangent of "what should Signal do to improve" but trying to stay on topic :) |
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I fully agree that this is a critical issue. I wasn't able to keep friends and family using Signal exactly because of this issue. Especially with higher resolution camera sensors and video modes (4K) in modern phones, sending videos (and big files) via Signal isn't possible anymore. IMHO, the limit should be removed completely and maybe made configurable (with default send/received size=unlimited). The argument that it is "too much for mobile users" doesn't count in my opinion as there is already a "auto download" configuration that can be turn off for mobile. Also the "press to download" option mentioned by OP would be sufficient as well. If it is still a concern to some, a warning could be shown before sending/receiving. Nice to have would be a dialog that ask if the file/video should be resampled and/or clipped before sending (similar to Telegram). But that is more of an improvement once the limit is removed. That's my 2c for making Signal more usable.. And finally I want to thank the creators and developers of Signal for there awesome work <3! I am a happy user since the early CyanogenMod/TextSecure days.. :-) |
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Just my two cents, i think Signal inherently attracts power users and techies, but needs to appeal to average non-techies as well. That's why i think the limit should be enabled by default with an option to disable it. When a large file is attempted to be sent it should resize images (and compress other files if possible) by default and show a small hint that this behavior can be changed in the settings. Personally i would apply the above both for desktop and mobile, since nowadays you cannot assume a desktop client is on an unmetered connection. |
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The problem with Signal is that is light years behind Telegram in terms of file size handling. I don't like the idea of downsizing anything since I always want the originals. Signal should have no file size limits. It should ask you if you want to resize or send the file without modification (re-compression). This is vital because not everyone uses Signal to share baby pictures. I actually encourage my clients to use Signal and we send technical graphics. Sometimes I need to send huge PDFs and sometimes I need to send 1GB videos. I care about security but Signal is really only useful for texting because of the existing file size limits. By the way, is Signal some kind of NSA honeypot? The data is stored on a cloud service right (Amazon?)? I would assume if encryption is end to end that data can only be brute force attacked? I'm trying to understand how Telegram got so popular yet they heavily promote security, which usually makes things a pain to use. |
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I do not understand why Signal puts these self-imposed limitations on itself that instantly puts it below most of the competition in every category except security. I got my fiancee onto Signal specifically to text me without pixelated videos/gifs etc (i have a Pixel 2 she's on an iPhone) but when I can't even send a simple high quality 5 second gif because it's too big (happened yesterday) that becomes an issue and will absolutely ensure that she does not try to convert her friends to Signal. Especially considering most of their (and my) group chats are them sharing videos/gifs/etc that would not be accepted by Signal due to file size limitation. E2E encryption is the only reason I use Signal anymore. Between file size limits and removing the plethora of chat color options for the most unjustifiable reason possible, I am considering dropping it at this point. |
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We have all the information we need about this issue. Please consider the forums if you'd like to discuss this further. Thanks! |
Bug description
Can't send a 150mb video file.
Steps to reproduce
Try sending a normal sized 1.5 minute video clip.
Actual result:
Attachment limit is far too low! 10gb would be more reasonable.
Expected result:
Allow any size of file attachment. Instead of dictating to a user how to use the software, instead give them the option to send whatever sized file they want. Letting someone dictate the use case of the software is not a good way to make the software more popular.
To address the concern about size limits (#115), the clients can have an icon appear on their end allowing them to download the file by tapping on it. Do not limit subsequent messages from being sent/received if the file is not downloaded by the target. Treat the download prompt like a singular text message. Telegram does this now.
Also, pictures are getting resized against my will. I want to send an un-resized image and there's no way to do it. This has caused problems for other use cases.
I was just at a gathering of friends telling everyone about the advantages of Signal but when one of them tried sharing a video, she ran into this limit and made Signal look really bad 👎 I really want to see a truly secure and open source application like this become more popular than WhatsApp but limits like this need to go away.
Screenshots
Platform info
Signal version: 4.29.7
Operating System:
Android
Linked device version:
Link to debug log
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