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988 points keyboardJones | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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amluto ◴[] No.45170784[source]
Wow, maybe as a side effect users will be able to migrate between Android and iOS without losing their message history.

Seriously, why is the migration protocol completely different on the two platforms?

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greysonp ◴[] No.45171576[source]
Hi there, Signal dev here. The new backup format is indeed cross-platform. I've successfully restored backups on an iPhone, we're just stabilizing things :)

If you're curious, the reason that Android's current local backups aren't cross platform is because it was made a long time ago, and it's literally a dump of all the sqlite statements that can be used to recreate Android's sqlite database (encrypted with a strong, random, local key). So not the most portable!

But this new thing is all cross-platform, and in the near future we'll even be making our local backups cross-platform.

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1. oezi ◴[] No.45172278[source]
Will the new backup format support also conversion of filetypes between Android and iOS? In the past Voice Memos from Android couldn't be opened on iOS if they weren't sent directly between participants.
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2. Nathan2055 ◴[] No.45172739[source]
That's really surprising to me.

iOS has had pretty decent audio format support for a few years now: even though you can't directly import FLAC files to iTunes/Music, they are supported in the OS itself since 2017 and play fine both in Files and in Safari. The other big mainstream formats (WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC, and ALAC) have been supported for years, and even Opus finally got picked up in 2021.

About the only non-niche audio format that isn't supported natively on Apple platforms at this point is Vorbis, which was fully superseded by Opus well over a decade ago. Even then, I believe it's possible to get Vorbis support in iOS apps using various media libraries, although I'm sure Apple frowns upon it.

I'd really love to know what's causing that incompatibility.

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3. oezi ◴[] No.45174675[source]
The issue is OGG with Opus (for me) which was used by WhatsApp but isn't natively supported under iOS.

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/4539