In short, Signal is an app that's focused on privacy first, and gives you a wide range of tools to manage that privacy.īarbara Smith contributed to a previous version of this article. You can also set your messages to disappear over time, or photos to disappear after a single viewing. Apple users will want to visit their privacy settings within the app and turn off 'Show Calls in Recents' to prevent your history from syncing with the cloud. It collects virtually no data and has features that Telegram and WhatsApp lack. To keep yours private, you can sign up with a Google voice number. In terms of security and privacy, Signal is the best secret messaging app. Signal requires a phone number to join the app. It also doesnt store any user data, and you dont need to provide any personal information to use it. If you're concerned about someone accessing the Signal app from your phone, you can lock the app with the same passcode or fingerprint scan normally used to lock your phone. It encrypts all your messages and even your profile data. For now, groups are capped at 150 people, but adding and removing new people from a group is simple.

Those include group admins, updates, timers for disappearing messages. Signal's beta version is testing new kinds of chats with forum-like features. You can even send and react to messages with emojis, much like on Slack and Discord.

In these chats, you can send pictures, videos, internet links, voice messages, and more. On a basic level, you can have one-on-one conversations with someone or start a group chat.

There's a Signal app on nearly every major system.

Use signal app