I finally started using Molly to send and receive messages via Signal. Molly is a hardened fork of Signal for Android, offering features such as an encrypted message database, automatic locking, shredding no longer needed secrets from RAM, notifications via UnifiedPush, and Tor / SOCKS proxy support. This is by no means an alternative to Signal itself, but rather an alternative (and hardened) Android client for Signal. While these extra security features are great, my main motivation to use Molly was battery saving, actually. I’m on GrapheneOS, which does offer sandboxed Google Play (opt-in), yet I’ve chosen not to use it. This means I’m not using Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for notifications either, which Signal by default heavily relies on. However, it continues to make me very glad I can still use a secure and open source mobile operating system (GrapheneOS) in 2025, without needing to rely on proprietary and privacy-impairing functionality.

When not using Google Play services (e.g. GrapheneOS, LineageOS users), Signal can be a real battery drain. Molly with UnifiedPush on the other hand is extremely battery efficient.

Here’s how to set this up, using Nextcloud as the UnifiedPush provider.

  • Sips'@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Nice thanks for sharing! How much more battery preserving have you found molly to be? Signal is also on the top of my list in terms of most battery-draining apps, so a migration to Molly sounds nice (also on GOS).

    Also, nice blog! Subscribed via rss ☺️

    • 0bs1d1an@infosec.pubOPEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I sadly haven’t tracked precise battery usage for both Signal and Molly, to properly compare. I do believe it easily saves me 10 percent on my daily battery life, though.

      Thanks for subscribing! :-)