Signal has announced that it is adding stories feature to the messaging app. As revealed by the company in an official blog update, “stories have emerged as a new way to communicate, with their own unique purposes, norms, and idiosyncrasies. Ephemeral, low-stakes, and image-heavy, people use stories to share updates about their lives without the expectation of a response.” It is worth noting that the stories feature was first introduced by Instagram a few years ago and it was later adapted by its sibling WhatsApp.
Just like WhatsApp status, on Signal stories you can share image, video, and text updates. Stories are available in the latest versions of Signal (v6.0) on both iOS and Android, which are rolling out now. Signal stories will automatically expire 24 hours after you share them, but you can always manually delete them earlier.
To choose who can see your stories, you can go to Settings > Stories. If you want to go broad, you can share your story with all of your Signal connections. To share stories with smaller subsets of people, you can create a custom story.
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Like read receipts for your chats, you also control whether you send view receipts for stories you look at and whether you see who’s viewed the stories you share. You can turn view receipts on or off in the Settings menu. To keep things private, you’ll only receive stories from people who are in your Signal connections.
You can also send stories to existing group chats. When you share a story with one of your pre-existing group chats, anyone in the group can see the story as well as other members’ comments and reactions to the story.
