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Signal gives you fine-grained control over how much information you share during normal use. The settings described here are all found under Settings → Privacy unless noted otherwise.

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Read receipts

Read receipts are the double-checkmark indicators that tell the sender when you have opened their message.
  • When enabled, your contacts see that you have read their message, and you see the same for theirs.
  • When disabled, no read receipts are sent or received. You will not see whether your contacts have read your messages either — the setting is mutual.
To toggle read receipts, go to Settings → Privacy and switch Read receipts on or off.
The read receipts setting applies mutually — if you disable it, you also stop seeing whether others have read your messages.

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Typing indicators

Typing indicators show an animated ellipsis in a conversation while you are composing a message.
  • When enabled, your contacts see the indicator while you type, and you see theirs.
  • When disabled, no typing indicators are sent or displayed. As with read receipts, the setting is mutual.
To toggle typing indicators, go to Settings → Privacy and switch Typing indicators on or off. When you paste a URL into a message, Signal can generate a preview showing the page title, description, and thumbnail. Because generating a preview requires Signal to fetch the linked page, this introduces a privacy trade-off: Signal’s servers briefly see the URL to request preview metadata before it is sent to your contact.
  • When enabled, Signal fetches and displays previews for links you send and receive.
  • When disabled, links are sent as plain text with no preview. No request is made to fetch link metadata.
Link previews are enabled by default. To disable them, go to Settings → Chats and switch Generate link previews off.
Even with link previews disabled, your contact’s device may still generate a preview if they have the setting enabled. Disabling link previews on your side only prevents your device from fetching metadata for links you are about to send.

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Who can find me

Signal lets you control whether new people can find your account by looking up your phone number. To change this setting, go to Settings → Privacy → Phone number and change Who can find me by number.
Setting discoverability to Nobody does not remove you from the contact lists of people who already have you as a Signal contact. It only prevents new people from finding your account by looking up your number.

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Call privacy

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Always relay calls

By default, Signal’s voice and video calls are peer-to-peer: once connected, audio and video travel directly between devices for the lowest possible latency. This means the other party’s device can observe your IP address from the connection. Enabling Always relay calls routes all call media through Signal’s servers (TURN relays) so your IP address is never exposed to the other party. To enable call relaying, go to Settings → Privacy → Advanced and enable Always relay calls.
Relaying calls adds latency and may reduce call quality on slower connections. For most users the impact is minor, but it is worth testing if call quality is important to you.

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Note to Self

Note to Self is a special conversation with yourself. It is useful for privately testing privacy settings — for example, you can send yourself a link to check whether link previews appear, or verify that no read receipt arrives after opening a message you sent. To open Note to Self, search for “Note to Self” in the conversation list or tap your own profile in the New message composer.
Note to Self messages are end-to-end encrypted just like any other conversation. They are also synced across your linked devices.