> Surprised how many people don't seem to know about it.

There are a few reasons for that.

1. The link to APK cannot be found on the official site[0], so it needs to be looked up in a search engine.

2. Even when downloading from the site, they try to scare you away with a warning [1]. The reason for warning could be avoided by hosting their own F-droid repo, but they refused it, claiming you can download APK and not listening to reason[2].

Though for people using F-droid can still get Signal through the Guardian repository [3]

Thing about the signal APK and the Guardian one is that, it still have the so called "crap" in the final APK, it just runs a background service when required google services are not detected, causing battery drain for many[4].

The drain could also be avoided by supporting UnifiedPush (it can fall back to FCM when it's detected), but they don't want to do that either[5].

[0] https://signal.org/download/

[1] https://signal.org/android/apk/

[2] https://community.signalusers.org/t/how-to-get-signal-apks-o...

[3] https://guardianproject.info/fdroid/

[4] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/9729

[5] https://community.signalusers.org/t/use-gcm-fcm-alternatives...

  > Surprised how many people don't seem to know about it.

I'm pretty sure people just want to be angry. I mean look at how many people are arguing that updating is... bad. I cannot and will not take those people seriously. It's just such a laughable position.

That’s a bug, not a feature. I don’t wish to give OWS permanent RCE on my devices.