Signal in 2025: A Year of Backups, Polls, and Quantum Crypto

Published: October 7, 2026 · Updated: October 8, 2026

The 2025 timeline

Three rows. That is not because little happened in 2025; it is because Signal's blog covers milestones, not every release. The Android app shipped roughly two dozen builds in 2025, most with one-line changelogs on GitHub. The three items above are the ones Signal itself chose to announce properly, which is a reasonable definition of "highlights."

Secure Backups: the most requested feature

For years, the most common Signal feature request was backups. Lose your phone, and your message history was gone: family photos, important documents, conversations you wanted to keep. In September 2025, Signal started rolling out the answer.

Secure Backups are opt-in and end-to-end encrypted. The first phase launched in the Android beta so Signal could test it with a smaller group before bringing it to iOS and Desktop. A recovery key protects the backup, so even Signal cannot read what you store.

Why it mattered: every other part of Signal already survived a lost phone except the messages themselves. Your account, your contacts, your groups all came back. Your history did not. Backups closed the last gap, and they did it without giving Signal access to your data.

The story did not end in 2025. A year later, Signal completed the rollout: on-device backups on Desktop and iOS, Android rebuilt in a cross-platform format, and restore across platforms. The 2026 roundup covers the finished product, and the Android backup guide covers what to do with it today.

SPQR: the quantum-resistant ratchet

On October 2, 2025, Signal announced the Sparse Post-Quantum Ratchet, mercifully shortened to SPQR. It is an upgrade to the Signal Protocol, the encryption technology underneath Signal and a good part of the world's private messaging.

Here is the plain-words version. Today, the Signal Protocol's encryption would hold up against any computer that exists. The worry is about computers that do not exist yet: a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could one day break the math underneath current encryption. SPQR adds a quantum-resistant ratchet alongside the existing one, so the keys protecting your ongoing conversations stay safe even in that future. Signal had already hardened the initial key exchange in 2023; SPQR extends the protection to the rest of the conversation.

The part users feel: nothing. The upgrade rolls out gradually and automatically with app updates. No settings to change, no buttons to press, no action needed. Your conversations simply become resistant to a threat that has not arrived yet. That quietness is the point. The best security upgrades are the ones you never notice.

Why it mattered: it made Signal one of the first major messengers to ship post-quantum protection for ongoing conversations, not just for the handshake at the start. For a nonprofit whose entire pitch is privacy, staying ahead of the cryptography curve is the job.

Group polls

In November 2025, Signal added polls to group chats. Tap the + button while composing a message to a group, write your question, add up to 10 options, and choose whether people can pick one option or several. End the poll when you are done collecting votes.

Two details worth knowing. Polls are end-to-end encrypted like everything else in Signal, and they are only visible to group members. But poll responses are not anonymous: anyone can see who voted for which option. Signal's announcement is upfront about this, even cheerful about it. Stand by your choices.

Why it mattered: group chats run on decisions, where to eat, when to meet, what to watch. Before polls, those decisions happened through message threads that scrolled away. Polls turned them into something structured. It is a small feature with daily impact, the kind people use without thinking about it a week later.

How each 2025 change reached your phone

The three highlights shipped in three different ways, and the pattern is worth noticing because Signal still ships this way.

Backups shipped beta-first. Signal's announcement says the first phase went to the Android beta specifically so the feature could be tested in a limited setting before reaching iOS and Desktop. This is Signal's standard playbook for anything that touches your data: test small, then roll wide. The beta channel exists for exactly this, and the beta guide explains how it works.

SPQR shipped silently. The announcement describes a gradual, automatic rollout: no settings, no buttons, no action needed. Protocol upgrades have to work this way. You cannot ask a hundred million people to flip a switch on the same day, so the new ratchet arrives with ordinary app updates and conversations move over on their own.

Polls shipped as "rolling out now." The announcement closes by saying polls are available in the latest versions for Android, Desktop, and iOS, which were rolling out at the time. Staged rollouts mean not everyone gets a feature on day one. If a feature is announced and your app does not have it yet, waiting a few days and updating is the fix, not reinstalling.

Three features, three shipping styles: beta-first for the risky one, silent for the invisible one, staged for the visible one. Once you see the pattern, Signal's release rhythm starts making sense.

What this recap leaves out, and why

A year-in-review built only from confirmed sources will always be shorter than one built from rumors. Here is what is deliberately missing and why.

First, the dozens of Android builds in between. Signal tags roughly two builds a month on GitHub, and most carry a one-line note or none at all. Listing every 7.x and early 8.x build with "bug fixes" next to it would add length without adding information.

Second, anything reported by third parties but never confirmed by Signal. If a blog or a forum claimed a feature was coming and Signal never announced it, it does not belong in a recap. The Android version history keeps the longer build-by-build record for readers who want it.

Third, dates more precise than the sources support. Signal's blog posts do not always show dates, so where only the month is confirmed, this page gives the month. Precision you cannot verify is decoration, not information.

From 2025 into 2026

2025 was the year Signal laid foundations. Backups solved the oldest feature request. SPQR future-proofed the protocol. Polls made group chats more useful. None of them was flashy; all of them were structural.

2026 built directly on top. Backups were completed across every platform. The protocol work continued quietly in the background of every update. And with the foundations in place, Signal spent 2026 on the everyday experience: linked devices, a rebuilt media editor, a new keyboard. The 2026 roundup picks up where this page leaves off.

If you are running the current build, you are already living in the world 2025 built. Backups protect your history, SPQR protects your future conversations, and polls are one tap away in every group. The download guide gets you the newest build if you do not have it yet.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides: all version guides · the 2026 roundup · full version history · Android backup guide · check the current build