Signal is starting to section out help for sending and receiving normal textual content messages from its Android app after years of supporting the power to have them alongside your Signal messages, that are end-to-end encrypted and despatched utilizing knowledge. The firm says that in case you have its app set as your default SMS and MMS shopper, you’ll have to select a brand new app to deal with these duties.

According to a Wednesday blog post, customers can have “several months to transition away from SMS in Signal” and emigrate their messages to a brand new app. Of course, the put up additionally recommends making an attempt to transform the individuals you had been texting into Signal customers. If you do use the characteristic (you possibly can verify by going to Signal’s settings display screen, then to Chats > SMS and MMS and seeing if “use as default SMS app” is enabled), you’ll begin seeing notifications reminding you that you just’ll have to alter over quickly.

The firm’s put up explains a number of the reason why it determined to make the change, however all of them boil all the way down to simplicity; it’s apprehensive about having two very various kinds of messaging in its app, one in every of which is end-to-end encrypted and makes use of knowledge, and one which’s roughly utterly insecure and has a separate billing scheme for some cellphone plans. (Signal particularly says it heard from customers who received smacked with excessive cellphone payments as a result of they despatched SMS messages after they thought they had been sending Signal messages.)

Not included within the put up is any point out of Rich Communication Services, or RCS, the usual that firms like Google, Samsung, and a few cell carriers are pushing as a substitute for SMS messaging. It’s not like RCS would’ve solved the confusion, although; it could possibly help end-to-end encryption however isn’t essentially safe by default, and you may’t ship RCS messages to iPhones, which means you’d both need to fall again to SMS or simply not have the ability to message some individuals in your default texting app.

Signal didn’t instantly reply to The Verge’s request for touch upon whether or not its app supported RCS or whether or not the adoption of it as a messaging normal for Android performed into its resolution to take away textual content messaging from its app.