What you need to know
- Signal debuts its own Stories feature after a month of beta testing.
- Users can create video, text, or photo stories to share with individuals or group chats that disappear in 24 hours but users can remove them sooner.
- Backed by Signal's end-to-end encryption, users can also decide whether to keep Stories on or off and who they'd like to share them with.
After a teaser for the new feature a month ago, Signal has arrived with its take on Stories.
According to a Signal community post, Stories are now rolling out for Android and iOS users with those on web devices gaining it at some point down the road. Signal prefaces the debut of the new feature by acknowledging the fact that Stories has been a highly requested feature for the messaging platform.
The new feature arrives after Signal was seen experimenting with this new feature back in October during a beta test.
With the arrival of Signal's Stories through v6.0 of the app on both Android and iOS, users can begin creating. These video, text, and image available Stories will disappear within 24 hours of someone sending them out to another person or multiple people. This new feature is backed by Signal's end-to-end encryption, and users can also delete their stories sooner if they choose.
There is also the option of choosing who can see your story. This can be done by navigating to Settings > Stories.
Signal explains that one can go quite broad with the accessibility of their stories by opening it up to their Signal connections. People that fall in this category are those in your phone's contact list that use Signal, anyone you've had a one-on-one messaging session with through the app, and those whose message requests you've accepted.
Users will also find the ability to finely tune these options by specifically restricting access to your stories for certain people. You can also turn off read receipts for stories, much as you can for chats, through the settings, too.
If you're interested in letting everyone know what you're up to, Signal's Stories feature allows users to share them with an entire group. Members in your group can share your story with other people not in that chat regardless of whether you know them or not. This will provide an update just to let you know what's going on with your story.
While Stories are everywhere, and Signal is falling in line with some of its competitors, there is the option of turning this new feature off entirely. Users can do so by heading into their Settings > Stories > Turn off stories. This choice is kept private so no one will know that you have turned the feature off.
Turning this off will also remove group-shared stories from your view on Signal, as well.
