Signal plays catch-up, starts testing ‘announcement groups’

Signal will soon get a ‘broadcast group’ feature, which lets users create a group chat expressly for announcements and similar updates.

Broadcast or announcement groups have been available for a while in competing message services like Telegram and WhatsApp, so it’s nice to see Signal playing catch-up here. These groups work by blocking members from sending messages unless they’re an admin.

How apps go about broadcast/announcement groups differs quite a bit. In Telegram, these groups block non-admins from talking, but also allow members to join live voice chats. WhatsApp doesn’t have an explicit ‘broadcast group’ feature but does let users disable the ability for non-admin group chat members to send messages, which achieves the same goal.

Android Police reports that Signal beta version 5.22 adds what it calls ‘announcement groups,’ which works very similar to WhatsApp’s implementation. Users can create a regular group chat, then go into ‘Permissions’ to turn off messages from non-admin users.

Since the feature is in beta, it may be a little bit before you can actually try it, unless you’re enrolled in the beta program. On that note, Android Police reports that the Signal 5.22 beta isn’t available on the Play Store yet, so even beta users may have to wait a bit to try out announcement groups. Still, it shouldn’t be too long before the feature arrives for users.

Source: Signal Via: Android Police