Weird behavior of messages

[adam-byczynski]

Hey guys,

I have had this certain problem for some time now on both:

• android app, miui 10 beta - xiaomi redmi note 4x

• windows 10 64bit

• same signal account on both devices

First thing is that on mobile version when i launched internet access it would take around 1 minute for signal to detect internet connection and begin autoupdating messages.
When i open signal before it autoupdates and i send something, this message will sort of overwritten by previous messages timewise, so instead of being on the bottom, since it is the newest message it will be stuck somewhere back between previous messages.
This same thing also happens on windows signal, when i have been texting via mobile and then launch signal and sent something before it updates.

Regading to that issue, it strikes me that when i launch signal on either device it's not already updated. What happens is that all sort of messages waiting in the cloud are being "printed" in the app one by one, so i takes some time to sync device to current state, moreover i receive a notification for every single one.

I apologise if the form of issue submission is incorrect, it's my first time to doing so. Thank you for your hard work!

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

So, it sounds like you're able to get to interactivity in the app before we start downloading new messages. Thus, the timestamp for the outgoing message is going to be before the time that we processed the incoming messages. So yes, it will be sorted that way.

It sounds like there are two issues here:

1. Don't pop notifications for every new message as it is downloaded (does that happen for both Desktop and Android?)
2. Improve on the sorting used for outgoing and incoming messages during a large sync

The first is a relatively simple bug, and should probably be filed separately.

The second is part of a larger discussion. Given that we don't trust the timestamps that come down to us embedded in incoming messages, we rely on the order that the server hands us those messages. Do we prevent you from sending messages until the download is done so your messages will for sure come after the incoming messages? Or artificially move the sent message down to the bottom, with a newer timestamp? This gets even more complex when consider that we may not know if there are pending messages on the server.