zzz you may use Session of course, it's a matter of personal preference, but why would they deliberately weaken the encryption they inherited in libsignal is beyond me - read this: https://soatok.blog/2025/01/14/dont-use-session-signal-fork/
For inter-profile file sharing personally I usually use SimpleX or InterProfileSharing of VentralDigital (available on Accrescent, GitHub or F-Droid). This is not a recommendation of course, merely a data point.
JollyRancher
Thank you. I knew about the one device, one account structure. I simply failed to think properly about it in relation to profiles. My small hope was that the owner account, which holds profile switch control, might hold a way for a secure messaging account to exist in more than one profile, as long as an unlock passphrase was used.
Yeah, pipe dream, huh?
zzz
Thank you.
I did understand the option of a second phone number, but that isn't something I wanted to implement to access signal. That phone number service seems unrealistically inexpensive, never heard of it before. Interesting.
Session is something I've looked at long ago, and decided wasn't for me. I do appreciate your willingness to offer ideas, though.
Thank you again.
I have got Signal in my main user and then I set up Molly on the same device in my "car" user. The trick is to define the new Molly installation as a secondary device you want to link to your main device (in this case the main profile) with the same number. Molly allows for that.
Works like a charm.
Themble
Appreciate the idea, was really excited, but unfortunately, it's not working out on my device.
Installed Molly in the target profile, gave it a different name than the install in the other profile, copied the key hash, switched back to the profile with the original install, unlocked Molly, select link another device, pasted the key, got the brief pop up dialogue, linking device - but nothing. Switch back to the linked profile instance, spinning wheel at the Molly screen, that had previously showed the key to be copied. Stuck like that forever.
I don't know if it's because the original Molly instance was key locked, or if it's because it's not in the owner account.
Frankly, it seems stupid to me that, the resident messaging app has unrestricted access to any and all additional profiles, but the same access by a secure messaging app is out of bounds.
GrapheneOS really needs to do better on this point.
BTW, Textra sometimes, after the phone isn't used overnight, allows a single successful text transmit to go out from the user profile, then fails all successive attempts to transmit a text.
I now find there's been text issues going back over a year. When is GrapheneOS going to fix this?
Granite GrapheneOS really needs to do better on this point.
The app has to make is possible. SMS being cross profile is because of how user profiles were programmed in Android in the first place.
Signal doesn't support (and actively works against) logging in on multiple phones. User Profiles are essentially separate phones, with both the pros and cons of that.
Granite
Here it sounds like you have Molly on 1st profile, and Molly on 2nd profile:
Installed Molly in the target profile, gave it a different name than the install in the other profile, copied the key hash, switched back to the profile with the original install, unlocked Molly, select link another device, pasted the key, got the brief pop up dialogue, linking device - but nothing.
But they describe something different - Signal on 1st profile, Molly on 2nd profile:
Themble I have got Signal in my main user and then I set up Molly on the same device in my "car" user.
In Molly's documentation, it looks like the primary installation does need to be Signal, while the secondary "linked devices" need to be Molly.
https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android/releases/tag/v6.31.2-1
Granite GrapheneOS really needs to do better on this point.
Its ok to feel frustrated. Just keep in mind that GOS is offered for free, and owes nothing to the likes of you or I. Something to ponder.
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/18927-on-open-source-and-complaining-to-the-manager
As someone else already pointed out, the source of complexity here lies in Signal / Molly's development priorities, not GOS'.
Take things one step at a time, some patience is required. Your desired setup is possible to achieve.
Granite Textra [...]
Probably better to make a separate thread for that.
zzz
Yes, I saw that Molly note from 2023. Doesn't say Molly needs to link to Signal.
Our friend has the first instance in the owner account. Neither of my instances are. I don't know if that's my issue, or if it's that Molly is locking down when it should be doing a handshake with the new instance, or if it just takes more than 20 minutes.
Inter profile sharing works, and works whether or not it's got encryption enabled. In fact, it works too well - it retains previously copied text, and there's no way to change that behavior.
I don't understand how it works, but if it's an on-device tunnel, wouldn't such mechanism be able to be leveraged in service of linked Molly instances?