Deleting Messages In Sign Would not Preserve Them Non-public

Sign is among the most safe non-public messaging apps round. Developed by the nonprofit group Sign Basis, the free messaging service presents end-to-end encryption for all communications despatched via the platform, together with textual content, voice calls, photos, and movies — made attainable by its progressive open supply Sign Protocol.

Consequently, nobody can entry your conversations with others on Sign, not even the Sign group itself. As well as, the messaging app solely requires customers to submit their phone quantity to enroll, with Sign Basis promising no advertisements, affiliate entrepreneurs, or monitoring. As such, Sign has grow to be a preferred alternative for hackers and activists, with the corporate overtly supporting protests in 2020 and even rolling out a characteristic that simply permits customers to blur faces to assist defend protestor identities. The app can be well-liked with these involved about privateness, with Sign rising in use as folks seemed for safe chat app options following WhatsApp’s privateness coverage replace in 2021.

Nonetheless, whereas Sign presents the flexibility for customers to additionally set their messages to robotically delete after a sure timeframe via its disappearing messages characteristic, this does not essentially preserve your incoming messages non-public. A defendant in Texas discovered that out firsthand when the FBI managed to extract a few of their deleted obtained messages from their iPhone’s notification database. Under, we break down how one can stop Sign message content material from showing in your telephone notifications on iOS and Android to assist your communications really keep non-public.

Whereas Sign’s end-to-end encryption means communications can’t be seen by others, content material out of your incoming messages should be saved in your telephone’s notification database. When enabled, notification previews — which present the content material of a message within the notification — could also be saved regionally in your machine in an inner database.

How lengthy these notifications stay saved depends upon your telephone’s OS. On Android, customers can select to allow or disable their telephone’s notification historical past log — and even when it is enabled, the system solely shops notifications for round 24 hours by default. Nonetheless, on iOS units, cached notifications, and due to this fact notification previews, are saved on the system for an unspecified period of time, that means that these notifications (and their content material) can nonetheless be accessed by forensic instruments, even in the event you’ve dismissed them or deleted the Sign app out of your telephone.

On April 15, 2026, Sign president Meredith Whittaker mentioned in an X put up: “Notifications for deleted messages should not stay in any OS notification database, and we have requested Apple to handle this.” Nonetheless, Apple didn’t instantly deal with Sign’s considerations, a minimum of not in any public means.

There is a easy change you may make to stop the content material of your Sign messages from showing in your telephone’s notifications. First, open the Sign app in your machine. Subsequent, navigate to Settings after which Notification Settings. Underneath the Notification Content material menu, choose No Identify or Content material. Which means that, whereas you can be notified you may have obtained a Sign message, the identify of the sender and the content material of the message won’t seem within the notification.

So as to add an additional layer of safety, you too can disable notification previews in your telephone. On Android units, you are able to do this by going to Settings, Notifications, after which Lock display notifications. Choose Disguise content material and toggle off Present content material when unlocked on the Lock display notifications menu to disable message content material from any of your apps from showing in your telephone notifications.

On iOS units, you are able to do this by going to Settings after which Notifications. On the Notifications menu, choose Present Previews after which By no means. This ensures that your iPhone notification previews by no means show content material you want to preserve non-public, comparable to incoming messages or electronic mail textual content — one other step towards getting your iPhone notifications below management.