Privacy-focused messaging app Signal announced on Monday that it’s introducing a feature that allows users to back up their text conversations for free, along with the last 45 days of media. It’s also debuting its first paid feature by offering full media backups with up to 100GB of storage.
Historically, the messaging app didn’t let users store any kind of backup of your conversations on the platform. This could be especially troublesome if you lost or broke your phone. While you could transfer conversations from one phone to another, there was no cloud backup in place. The new feature finally solves that problem, making Signal a more valuable app for secure messaging.
Signal’s free tier gives users 100MB of storage for text messages and the last 45 days’ worth of media. The company said in its blog post that it stores messages after compressing them, and 100MB would be sufficient for “even heavy” users.
For users who want to store beyond the last 45 days of media, the company is offering a $1.99 per month paid plan with 100GB of storage.
This is Signal’s first paid feature, and the company said it’s charging users to assist with the cost of storage in a privacy-preserving way.
You can enable the secure backup feature from the app’s Settings, which will then begin to back up your content daily.
Signal is using zero-knowledge technology to secure its backups, so they’re not linked to a particular user or a specific payment method. Users will receive a 64-character recovery key that is generated on the device to unlock their backups. Amid Signal rivals, WhatsApp offers end-to-end backup through an optional feature that users have to enable.
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At launch, Signal is offering this feature only on the beta version of its Android app, but said that cross-platform availability is coming soon. It noted that, in the future, it plans to let users save a backup archive wherever they want. Plus, it intends to enable users to transfer their message history between platforms.
