Signal version 8.30 finishes a rollout that began on Android about a year ago: encrypted on-device backups now work on iOS, Android, Linux, macOS and Windows alike. The backup file stays where the user puts it, has no size cap, and can be opened only with a recovery key that Signal says it never holds.
The release also moves media out of the main archive and adds a faster phone-to-phone transfer on iPhone. Signal’s own blog post, dated September 28 and titled “Back to Backups: A Year in Review,” frames the changes as a look back at twelve months of work on its Secure Backups feature, including the new local format that the desktop and iOS apps now share with Android.
Two backup paths, one encryption model
Signal now offers a hosted option and a local one. In its September 28 post on backup improvements, the nonprofit says on-device backups “provide another way to preserve an end-to-end encrypted copy” of Signal messages, and that they share one cross-platform format across iOS, desktop and Android. BleepingComputer’s report on the release adds that local backups carry no size restriction, unlike the hosted tiers, and that a backup can be restored on a different device.
The hosted service is the older of the two. When Signal introduced Secure Backups in September 2025, it described a free tier covering all text messages plus 45 days of media, and a paid tier at $1.99 a month that extends media storage to 100 GB. Signal gave the reason plainly: storing and transferring large amounts of data is expensive, and a nonprofit that refuses to monetize user data needs another source of revenue.
The recovery key as the only way in
Both paths rest on a recovery key. Signal’s launch announcement says the key is the only way to unlock a backup, that it consists of 64 characters, and that it remains on the device, where the company cannot read or reset it. The backups are built so they carry no direct link to an account or payment record, and media files receive an additional layer of encryption and size padding so their contents are harder to infer from their length.
The hosted tier adds a second safeguard. Signal’s blog post explains that a supplemental key, which “rotates daily,” is stored inside a Trusted Execution Environment, a hardware-isolated area of a server. A local backup does not use that server-side component, so the recovery key alone governs access. According to gHacks’ coverage of 8.30, one recovery key can decrypt every past backup file it encrypted, regardless of where those files are stored. That design lets a person keep several dated archives and still open all of them with the same key, and it means losing the key is the one failure that no support request can repair.
Signal also warns that attackers have already targeted recovery keys. Its guidance is to keep the key in a password manager and to avoid screenshots or shared folders, since anyone who obtains the key and a copy of the archive can read the history.
Media, duplicates and what stays out
Version 8.30 changes how attachments are stored. Media now sits separately from the message archive, and a file that appears in many chats is saved once. Signal’s example shows a library of 5,120 megabytes shrinking to roughly 600 megabytes. Paying users can also offload old photos and videos from the device, keep thumbnails in the conversation, and download the full files from the hosted backup on demand, which turns a phone with limited storage into a viewer for a much larger archive.
Newly linked devices can use the same machinery to retrieve older attachments missing from the history they received. On the free hosted tier, messages above 128 KB count as attachments.
Some content never enters a backup. Messages set to disappear within 24 hours are excluded from both hosted and local copies, which preserves the point of a short timer. Signal’s support documentation on backup and restore still describes the older Android file-based passphrase system and the iOS device-to-device transfer, so those pages lag the new format at the time of writing.
Faster iPhone transfers over Wi-Fi Aware
On iOS, 8.30 also rebuilds the move from one phone to another. Signal says the transfer now uses Wi-Fi Aware networking, a local peer-to-peer connection, for “dramatically improved speed and reliability,” and the data stays end-to-end encrypted in transit. Until now, the iOS support page notes, message history on iPhone was moved to a new device rather than copied, and an iTunes or iCloud backup contained none of it.
The practical result is a messenger with two answers to the lost-phone problem. The hosted service suits people who want Signal to hold an encrypted copy and are content with 45 days of media or a paid 100 GB allowance. The local option suits people who want the archive on hardware they own, with no size ceiling, and who are willing to be the only keeper of a 64-character key.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
More from Morning Overview
- Doctors warn a silent liver disease now affects one in three American adults
- Hackers are hijacking outdated home routers, and the FBI named the models to check
- Older Teslas are wearing out in ways early owners never saw coming
- Early electric-car owners are hitting battery and screen failures no one warned them about
