[reayn]

It also eats up disk space on macOS (and I assume every other desktop considering the client is the same), I've had to reinstall it multiple times now just to save almost a dozen gigabytes of space...

I'm not even an active signal user, I only have a few friends on there, I can only imagine what it's like for someone who uses signal as their only chat app, it must get crazy.

Disappearing messages (4 weeks etc.) help mitigate the problem a little bit from what I've noticed but it's nowhere near a complete solution.

[adastra22]

Are you guys sending HD movies around or something? How is a chat app using dozens of gigabytes for message logs?

[reayn]

I semi-frequently send audio files to one of the aforementioned friends of mine, and that’s about it. Everything else is just images (which signal compresses to oblivion btw) and stickers.

The fact that there’s no way to view individual files that have been sent to/from me (+ their sizes) and remove them—like there is for messages.app in macOS—makes troubleshooting even harder here.

I will admit though that I haven’t looked too far into the problem but it’s seems to be an issue that just about every signal user I know deals with.

[proactivesvcs]

This is a real pain on desktop. I've taken to try to remember to delete files I've sent/received straight away if I don't need them.