Like Instagram, Facebook and so many others, Signal is hopping aboard the Stories bandwagon. The privacy-focused messaging app started beta testing an ephemeral Stories function this week. Users can share movies, pictures and text-based messages with their mates. Stories will vanish after 24 hours.

As with the remainder of the platform, Signal’s Stories have end-to-end encryption. Users can select who to share them with. Along with teams and customized mates lists, you could choose to share a narrative with your entire connections (your contacts and anybody else you’ve spoken with one-on-one). If you decide to put up a narrative to a gaggle, others can react, reply to and share it.

For now, the one individuals who will see Stories are different beta testers. If you do not need to see Stories in Signal, you possibly can swap them off within the settings. This will forestall you from posting Stories of your personal, although.

It stays to be seen whether or not Stories might help Signal to get individuals spending extra time within the app and even to herald new customers. Instagram famously aped certainly one of Snapchat’s most-used options with its tackle Stories. They’re now a core a part of the Instagram expertise. Not each platform that has tried Stories has caught with it, although. In 2021, Twitter and LinkedIn each ditched their Stories options after lower than a 12 months.