Signal, going into settings crashes every time

Shendai

Have ran into a vexing issue that has no clear resolution anywhere online that I looked.

Going into signal settings crashes the app, every time, consistently. Wasn't really an issue until I needed to sync signal with a copy of it running on a laptop. Now I can't do that and its a problem.

The two times this was opened on github the issue was closed for elapsed time, not because there was a solution. On a different forum, an update to signal seemed to fix the issue. I've cleared the cache, reboot the phone, and it still crashes every time. I've been able to access settings on signal before many times as I've linked it with a few different computers, but now it doesn't work. If it helps, I installed it through Aurora.

Has anyone ran into this, and is there a solution? Thank you.

Probably9857

Shendai

Molly?

RockHyrax

have you tried installing signal from anywhere else to see if problem still persists?

I have never experienced this issue with Signal. Its worth noting that I have always installed Signal from Github via Obtainium. (been using graphene os & signal for about 2 years now with no issues)

Shendai

RockHyrax Well, that's a good idea actually, and I'd be happy to try uninstalling Signal, then re-installing it from another source, but here's the thing. I cannot access the settings to create a backup of my text history to export/import, and I'm unwilling to lose that at this point.

I suppose I'm going to lose it anyway at some point if this issue persists, but I'd rather not force it now if I don't have to. Perhaps some update to Signal in the next few months will resolve this so I can at least make a backup before trying some of the other solutions. Weird, annoying bug.

To the kind suggestion about using Molly, same issue. Really don't want to lose years of text history if I don't have to.

ron

Shendai I think the best you can do is what you already suggested. Hope that a future update fixes it before your device dies or the signal chats get corrupted in some way

Fay_Wilmont

Try launching into one of its screens directly with an activity launcher. I was able to get into the settings by launching org.thoughtcrime.securesms.components.settings.app.AppSettingsActivity (probably crashes on your device, but worth a try) and into the linked devices screen with org.thoughtcrime.securesms.DeviceProvisioningActivity.

Shendai

Thank you all for the ideas. The app launcher didn't work, but I've installed Molly and that's working fine now, settings included. I've re-linked the laptops I needed to so all is well.

I'll keep the version of Signal installed (though it doesn't work now with Molly installed) in the hopes that some future fix will resolve this and I can extract my messages.

In the meantime, this workaround solution is fine. A bit disturbed that signal just arbitrarily stopped working like it did with no access to settings. If this is a GrapheneOS specific issue, that's doubly disturbing, as Signal is the only real messaging tool I trust.

Blastoidea

I can’t help wondering how many other users have this problem.

Signal has always been rock-solid for me, since very shortly after it became Signal.