Enterprise, government or individuals, anyone who seriously wants to secure their communications uses the cross-platform Signal service.

Here are a dozen tips to help you get more from using this on your iPhone.

Secure by design

Signal is built to be secure. So much so in fact that the European Commission this year instructed staff to begin using the encrypted Signal messaging app for public instant messaging. Encrypted emails and highly secure document exchange systems are also used.

What makes Signal secure?

It’s open source, uses end-to-end encryption by default and doesn’t store message metadata or use the cloud to back-up messages.

This makes the content of your messages really hard to intercept (though I hesitate to say impossible, we live in difficult times). iMessage also offers end-to-end encryption, but is sadly not cross-platform, which gives Signal the edge.

One important caveat:

If you are messaging with someone who is not using Signal then nothing is encrypted. Everyone in a chat should be using it to benefit from this security, particularly if you’re exchanging valuable data.

Signal has a selection of useful features, some of which I hope to explain in this piece.

Signal is free and works on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows, Linux and Android.

1: Easy transportation

Signal recently introduced a new iOS tool that makes it possible to securely transfer Signal data (messages, archived chats) to new iPhones.  That’s a big benefit if you upgrade your device and it’s very simple to use:

• Install Signal on your new device.
• Open the app and select Transfer from iOS Device.
• A QR code will appear.
• Take your old device, select Next and scan the QR code.
• Signal will transfer your data from your old to your new iPhone.

2: Blur your pictures

Signal is developing a new tool you can use to blur faces in images you choose to send using the service. This is designed to help you and those around you retain your privacy. You access this tool using a new round icon (looks like a PS controller) at the top of an image – tap it to activate it and Signal will blur any faces it finds in an image.

3: Set it up right

When you create a Signal account the service will require you provide a phone number, which becomes your username.

To avoid sharing your actual number it’s possible to use a Google Voice number – just log-in to Voice with a Google account and select a new number. You’ll need to provide an actual number for Google’s verification process, but can then use the Voice number to further protect your Signal.

You should also turn off Notifications for Signal on your iPhone. This will prevent messages appearing on your Lock screen. You do this in Settings>Notifications>Signal>Show Previews>Never.

4: Password protection

You can add another layer of security to your use of Signal if you enable biometric or passcode access in order to get into the app. You can do this in the Privacy section inside the app, where you switch Screen Lock on. Once it is on you’ll need to enter your passcode or use Touch or Face ID to open up the app.

5: Disappearing messages

Signal has this cool feature that lets you make messages disappear on both your own and other people’s devices – though you need to work through each person in a messages thread to make it work:

• In a message chat tap the name of the contact (you need to repeat this process for each one).
• Toggle over Disappearing Messages and set the amount of time you want them to exist before they digitally disappear.
• You can choose between 5-seconds and one week.
• A timer icon shows on the thread. Anyone who sees this can use this icon to change the time, or disable the feature.

This isn’t a foolproof way to protect your conversations, but it helps.

6: Block this chat

Tired of endless alerts from one of your contacts? Signal lets you block them:

• Tap their name in the chat and toggle block this user.
• Or visit Privacy>Blocked>Block this user and select the person you don’t want to hear from.

7: Send an image you can see only once

Signal lets you share an image with another user that only works once before it disappears on both your own and the other device. Select the image and then tap the icon you see on the lower left corner – it should change to 1x. When you send it the image will only be viewable once before being deleted from both devices.

8: Secret Notes

Signal has something called Note to Self. This is basically a built-in ‘Note to Self’ contact which you can text, send photos or voice notes to, or anything else. You can use this as a slightly secure equivalent to Notes.

9: Use Keyboard shortcuts

Did I mention Signal also works on a Mac? When it does work on a Mac you get access to a number of useful keyboard shortcuts, all of which you can learn thanks to this handy reference card which you will find here.

10: Verify the chat

Signal has a tool that lets you check against man-in-the-middle attacks when someone sits in the middle of your conversation. For each call, the Signal app displays two words on the callers’ phone screens – if the words are different on both devices then something is wrong. Here’s a video that explains how the maths behind the feature works.

Please share your Signal tips with me so I can add them to this piece.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.

Enterprises, government officials or individuals anyone who seriously wants to secure their communications uses the cross-platform Signal service.

Here are a dozen tips to help you get more from using this on your iPhone.

Secure by design

Signal is built to be secure, so much so that the European Commission this year instructed staff to begin using the encrypted messaging app for public instant messaging. Encrypted emails and highly secure document exchange systems are also used.

What makes Signal secure?

It’s open source, uses end-to-end encryption by default and doesn’t store message metadata or use the cloud to back up messages. This makes the content of your messages really hard to intercept (though I hesitate to say impossible, as we live in difficult times). iMessage also offers end-to-end encryption, but is sadly not cross-platform, which gives Signal the edge.

One important caveat:

If you are messaging with someone who is not using Signal, then nothing is encrypted. Everyone in a chat should be using it to benefit from this security, particularly if you’re exchanging valuable data.

Signal has a selection of useful features, some of which I explain in this piece. It’s free and works on the iPhone, iPad, Macs, Windows PCs, Linux hardware and Android devices.

1: Easy transportation

Signal recently introduced a new iOS tool that makes it possible to securely transfer Signal data (messages, archived chats) to new iPhones.  That’s a big benefit if you upgrade your device and it’s very simple to use:

• Install Signal on your new device.
• Open the app and select Transfer from iOS Device.
• A QR code will appear.
• Take your old device, select Next and scan the QR code.
• Signal will transfer your data from your old to your new iPhone.

2: Blur your pictures

Signal is developing a new tool to blur faces in images you send using the service. This is designed to help you and those around you retain your privacy. You access this tool using a new round icon (it looks like a PS controller) at the top of an image – tap it to activate and Signal will blur any faces it finds in an image.

3: Set it up right

When you create a Signal account, the service will require that you provide a phone number, which becomes your username.

To avoid sharing your actual number, it’s possible to use a Google Voice number – just log-in to Voice with a Google account and select a new number. You’ll need to provide an actual number for Google’s verification process, but can then use the Voice number to further protect your Signal.

You should also turn off Notifications for Signal on your iPhone. This will prevent messages appearing on your Lock screen. You do this in Settings>Notifications>Signal>Show Previews>Never.

4: Password protection

You can add another layer of security to Signal if you enable biometric or passcode access to get into the app. You do this in the Privacy section inside the app, where you switch Screen Lock on. Once it is on, you’ll need to enter your passcode or use Touch or Face ID to open up the app.

5: Disappearing messages

Signal has this cool feature that lets you make messages disappear on both your own and other people’s devices – though you need to work through each person in a messages thread to make it work:

• In a message chat, tap the name of the contact (you need to repeat this process for each one).
• Toggle over Disappearing Messages and set the amount of time you want them to exist before they digitally disappear.
• You can choose between 5 seconds and one week.
• A timer icon shows on the thread. Anyone who sees this can use this icon to change the time, or disable the feature.

This isn’t a foolproof way to protect your conversations, but it helps.

6: Block this chat

Tired of endless alerts from one of your contacts? Signal lets you block them:

• Tap their name in the chat and toggle “block this user.”
• Or visit Privacy>Blocked>Block this user and select the person you don’t want to hear from.

7: Send an image you can see only once

Signal lets you share an image with another user that only works once before it disappears on both your own and the other device. Select the image and then tap the icon you see on the lower left corner – it should change to 1x. When you send it the image will only be viewable once before being deleted from both devices.

8: Secret Notes

Signal has something called Note to Self. This is basically a built-in ‘Note to Self’ contact that you can text, send photos or voice notes to, or anything else. You can use this as a slightly secure equivalent to Notes.

9: Use Keyboard shortcuts

Did I mention Signal also works on a Mac? When it does, you get access to a number of useful keyboard shortcuts, all of which you can learn thanks to this handy reference card.

10: Verify the chat

Signal has a tool that lets you check against man-in-the-middle attacks when someone sits in the middle of your conversation. For each call, the Signal app displays two words on the callers’ phone screens – if the words are different on both devices then something is wrong. Here’s a video that explains how the feature works.

Please share your Signal tips with me so I can add them to this piece.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.

In the middle of the day yesterday, Google dropped a big honkin’ surprise in our laps: the official Android 11 Beta release.

No buildup, no fanfare, no virtual events — just a short ‘n’ sweet blog post, some additional info for developers, and a website to download the software to supported Pixel phones for anyone feeling adventurous.

The Android 11 Beta is significant for a couple of reasons. First, even though Android 11 itself has been in a public developer preview since February, this is the first time it’s being made easily accessible to average users — and the first time it’s anywhere near stable enough to be advisable for regular phone-totin’ folk to use. (That being said, it still isn’t something a typical phone-owner should install, especially on a primary phone you rely on for work.)

But beyond that, this week’s release gives us our first real look at what’s likely the complete picture — or something very close to it — of what Android 11 represents. The early developer previews were kind of like rough skeletons, in a sense, and this beta release adds in the meat around those bones.

That means some of the flashiest, most high-profile features of the software are now in front of us, and while there aren’t any huge surprises, there’s certainly some noteworthy stuff — including a newly refined notification panel that separates out conversation-centric alerts and places them in their own dedicated section, the long-awaited debut of Android’s Bubbles multitasking system, a fancy new control panel for connected devices, and a new universal media player with better tools for controlling audio across multiple devices.

You know what, though? Welcome as those outward-facing touches will be, the most meaningful additions to Android 11 are actually the software’s less flashy enhancements — the ones that exist mostly under the hood. And almost all of ’em revolve around one critically important factor in any modern mobile-tech environment: privacy.

These aren’t the changes that’ll be placarded in countless headlines or treated as marquee-worthy elements. But make no mistake about it: They’re the ones that’ll matter the most, especially if you’re using your phone for business.

Android 11’s permission progress

Google’s developer-aimed talk about Android 11 and privacy reveals some fascinating facts that really set the stage for this discussion.

First, though, a quick bit of background: In Android 10, Google introduced a more nuanced system for controlling how and when apps are able to access your location. You know the deal by now, right? Instead of having an all-or-nothing choice on the matter, you can opt to allow an app to access your location all the time, none of the time, or only when the app is actively in use.

Well, according to Google Principal Engineer Narayan Kamath, that flexibility really resonated with us Android-adoring animals. Kamath says users with Android 10 opted for the “only while the app is active” level of location access roughly half the time — and what’s more, when the system reminded folks later that an app was accessing their location in the background, more than two-thirds of ’em took that opportunity to revisit the setting and restrict the app’s access.

With that knowledge in mind, Google decided to expand upon the same basic concept with Android 11 and give us even more clarity and control over what apps are able to do. So first and foremost, the software now lets you opt to grant an app a limited, one-time permission to access your location, camera, or microphone — meaning it will be able to tap into that area for that one single session, while you’re using it, but will then lose that power as soon as you move on to something else.

JR

In order to achieve something similar now, you’d need the help of a third-party service. Having that function built directly into the operating system and available for anyone is obviously a superior arrangement — and for privacy-focused business users in particular, being able to easily grant a permission for a limited purpose (say, tweeting with your location in place while at a work conference) and then knowing it’ll go away on its own when you’re done will be a valuable new power to have.

And that’s only the start.

Privacy, privacy, privacy

In addition to the new one-time permission option, Google’s pushing the background location permission even deeper into the system with Android 11 and making it more difficult for apps to request.

The permission prompt that pops up when an app initially asks for location access now has only the options to allow access while the app’s actively in use, for that single session, or never. If the app wants to be able to see your location all the time, it’ll then have to pop up a separate prompt later on that asks you to grant it that broader access and explains exactly why it needs it. If you agree to give it the permission, you’ll then be taken to a full-screen system settings screen in which you can deliberately make the change — which makes it much less likely for such a permission to be approved inadvertently.

Google

Beyond that, Android 11 will address a long-standing smartphone privacy weak point: forgotten apps that you no longer use but that are still installed and thus still have access to potentially sensitive areas of your personal data. (There’s a reason why that was the first issue to consider in my Android privacy guide!) With Android 11, any apps that haven’t been opened for a certain amount of time — “a few months,” according to Google’s explanation — will automatically have all of their system-level permissions revoked.

That means even if you granted an app access to, say, your location, your camera, or your internal phone storage, if you haven’t actively used the app in a while, that access will be taken away — and having the app present on your device will no longer be a privacy liability. Smart!

Whenever such a shift happens, you’ll see a notification informing you of the change and giving you the opportunity to review the revoked permissions and either leave ’em alone or reinstate ’em. That ties into a whole new section of the Android settings where unused apps are collected and available for your review.

Google

And if you think the unused-app issue isn’t a real problem, consider Google’s stats on the subject: The average Android user has 75 apps on their phone, according to Principal Engineer Narayan Kamath, and yet interacts with only about a third of those programs. And not all of us are gonna be as proactive about identifying and removing such items periodically. Bringing this to folks’ attention and automatically shutting down the related permissions is a clever way to address it without requiring any ongoing effort.

And there’s even more yet.

The fine privacy print

Basic permission stuff aside, we now know that Android 11 will limit an app’s ability to see what other apps are installed on your phone — something that was actually possible up until this release. (There was a minor outrage some years back when Twitter started tapping into that ability in order to learn more about its users and beef up their ad targeting profiles.) As of Android 11, no more.

This new Android version will also limit the ways apps are able to interact with your local storage. In short, each app will have its own private storage area that only it is allowed to access — meaning other apps won’t be able to see or interact with info from outside of their fence. When it comes to shared storage like your media and downloads folders, any app will be able to add to those areas but will need explicit approval from you in order to access and modify files that it didn’t create.

Finally — and perhaps most important of all — Android 11 will pull even more critical software pieces out of the operating system and turn them into standalone, easily updatable elements that exist as part of the Play Store. That, too, builds upon a trend started with Android 10 and is intended to make it easier for Google to deliver important updates to all Android users at the same time without having to rely on lazy, ineffective manufacturers to handle the rollout (although, of course, it’ll require a manufacturer-provided upgrade to Android 11 before it becomes relevant — so it’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, at least for the immediate future).

Android 11 more than doubles the number of once-OS-bundled modules that’ll exist in the Play Store and receive those fast, frequent, and universal updates. And given that those modules revolve largely around the areas of privacy and security, the effect of that could be massive — especially for people who don’t use Google’s own Pixel phones and consequently tend to be behind the curve with software.

All of this is admittedly pretty technical and more than a little geeky. It’s a lot to chew on, and it isn’t the sort of stuff that lends itself well to a pithy ad or casual conversation. But while Android 11’s more superficial improvements are the ones that’ll get the most attention, these are the changes that’ll ultimately have the greatest impact on our lives. Instead of affecting how we interact with our devices, they’ll affect how our devices interact with us.

That is arguably the most consequential part of the phone-using experience. And that, my friends, is why OS updates absolutely matter — for reasons that go way beyond what you see on the surface.

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Usually, Google uses its annual developer conference to showcase the most noteworthy features of its latest Android version, but when the coronavirus pandemic hit, Google I/O 2020 was canceled.

In reality, it was technically canceled twice, as Google hinted at a potential online event to take its place following the initial cancellation.

That event never came to pass, but in early May, Google announced that it would put on an Android 11 Beta Launch Show on June 3rd. But just days before the stream was slated to happen, protests broke out around the US and the rest of the world over the murder of George Floyd. Google opted to postpone the show and the release of the beta, but on Monday, June 10th, the time was finally right to unleash the Android 11 Beta.

You can read all about the Android 11 Beta on the Android Developers blog, or, if you prefer, you can watch hours of talks about everything new in Android 11 in this YouTube playlist. But there are three main themes of Android 11 that Google wants to highlight, and we’ll do our best to sum them up below.

The first theme is People, as Google wants to make the Android operating system more “people-centric and expressive.” There are several ways that Google wants to accomplish this, including conversation notifications that appear in their own dedicated section, bubbles to keep conversations in view while multitasking, context-specific autofill suggestions, and “an on-device visual cortex” that makes it easier to control your phone with your voice.

Controls are the second theme, as Google wants you to be able to control all of your smart devices in one space. The new device controls make it easier to access all of your connected devices, and all you have to do to reach them is long press the power button. There are also media controls that simplify the process of changing the output of a device, so you’ll spend less time figuring out how to listen to music on your TV or headphones.

Privacy is the third and final theme, and Google has clearly made privacy a priority in Android 11. Going forward, when apps ask for permission to use your camera, microphone, or location, you can grant permission just once, and force the app to ask again the next time you use it. These permissions will also auto-reset if it’s been a long time since you last used an app. Google also extended the deadline for getting approval to access background location in apps to 2021, so developers have more time before they have to follow this new rule.

If you want to try out any of these new features for yourself, you can download the Android 11 Beta right now by visiting the enrollment website on an eligible device. So far, only the Pixel 2, Pixel 3, Pixel 3a, and Pixel 4 lines will work with the beta, so unless you own one of those devices, you’re out of luck for now.

Amidst a flurry of rumors surrounding Apple’s iPhone 12 release, a new report from Digitimes (via SeekingAlpha) claims that iPhone 12 production is slated to begin in July.

The publication further adds that Engineering Validation Tests (EVT) on the next-gen iPhone will wrap up later this month. As a point of reverence, the EVT phase of iPhone development concludes once Apple firmly drills down the precise iPhone design and feature set it plans to ship to consumers. Put simply, the iPhone design and testing process, which was delayed for a bit on account of the coronavirus, appears to be back on track.

As to when Apple’s iPhone 12 will arrive in stores, that remains up in the air. While it’s safe to assume that Apple will unveil its iPhone 12 lineup at a special media event in September, we’ve seen reports indicating that the devices may not arrive until October. Even in a scenario where some iPhone 12 models hit store shelves in late September or early October, there are rumblings that some iPhone 12 Pro models may be delayed until November or December.

The iPhone 12 release schedule aside, Apple’s forthcoming iPhone lineup will be ambitious, to say the least. This year, Apple is planning to launch four distinct iPhone models, all of which will boast OLED displays. All told, Apple’s iPhone 12 lineup this year will include two iPhone Pro models in 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch form factors. The non-Pro iPhone 12 models, meanwhile, will ship with 5.4-inch and 6.1-inch displays.

The biggest feature of Apple’s next-gen iPhone lineup will be the inclusion of 5G support. Though some Android handset makers released devices with 5G connectivity months ago, those devices arrived at a time when 5G coverage was far from expansive. Since then, the nation’s top carriers have aggressively expanded 5G support across the country. In turn, the inclusion of 5G on the iPhone 12 may spur more upgrades than what Android manufacturers experienced earlier this year.

As for other iPhone 12 features to look forward to, Apple’s top of the line iPhone 12 Pro models will reportedly boast a LiDAR sensor, improved optical zoom, and a number of other camera enhancements. Meanwhile, all iPhone 12 models will likely feature improved low-light camera performance. One particularly intriguing rumor claims that the iPhone 12 may even allow users to take video in portrait mode.

Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro models are also expected to feature 120Hz ProMotion displays, a technology that will allow for improved responsiveness and even more fluid scrolling compared to previous models.

Additionally, the entirety of Apple’s iPhone 12 lineup will feature improved speakers that will be 10-15% louder, improved cellular and Wi-Fi speeds, and last but not least, Apple’s next-gen Ax processor.

As a final point, the design language of the iPhone 12 will be slightly different than its predecessors. According to a number of leaks, the iPhone 12 form factor will boast more rectangular edges and will be somewhat reminiscent of the iconic iPhone 4 design Apple released nearly 10 years ago.