What are the automatic reminders that I should use “Add as Second Device”?

I never managed to use the “Add Second Device” feature, and the reason is simple: I don’t even remember when was the last time I was running/using a local network, perhaps 30+ years ago? Realistically, how many people are using local networks anymore, other than companies? Hence I always backup and restore, but still get the annoying automatic reminders that I should “Add as Second Device”. Is there any way to stop this madness? :slight_smile: Thanks

To be honest, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t use Wi-Fi at home.

This may be a bug. After adding an additional device via backup, such messages should not appear.

if one does not have a Wi-Fi available, a hotspot is an easy and reliable way, from the FAQ:

If you still have troubles using the same network, try to open Mobile Hotspot on one device and join that Wi-Fi from the other one

for the reminder - yes, that sounds like a bug, but also not sure what you mean. can you provide a screenshot and elaborate?

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Oh? Does being on the same WiFi network count, too? I am always on the same WiFi network with both devices but never managed to use that “second device” trick, ever. They were on the same WiFi but never saw each other. Maybe there is some separation setting in my WiFi modem but didn’t bother to go that deep, I have multiple homes, multiple WiFi modems, and never succeeded with that “second device” thing…

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I will try the Mobile Hotspot trick. However, I still do not understand WHY ON EARTH we have to go through all this trouble, why a simple backup-restore does not end up with the same result. Also I do not understand the language “on the older device”, in what sense “older”? I purchased the phone earlier? Or running a lower level Android system? In what sense has to be a chronological order, and most importantly: WHY? Why can’t this software be a bit simpler? Also, I have serious problems with the encryption idea, because I can encrypt my messages, but in no way I can force all my contacts to encrypt theirs, so we are back to square one, Delta Chat is no more useful than Protonmail or the others… security is as safe as BOTH parties are safe, if one party doesn’t care about keeping their messages secret, it is pointless… :slight_smile:

Many access points expose a setting for “client isolation”. If it is on, stations can’t talk to each other, so it would be great if you could disable that. Some interfaces may use different wording, such as wireless isolation, AP isolation, L2 isolation or station isolation.

To be fair, Protonmail is trying to encrypt e-mail by persuading everyone to switch to Protonmail. Deltachat is trying to encrypt e-mail by persuading everyone to switch to some open encryption standards like Autocrypt (which Protonmail refuses to implement). Deltachat is doing this mostly by making it easy to use encryption and easy for anyone to run a server offering free encrypted-only e-mail addresses.

Deltachat is also making it mildly more difficult to used unencrypted mail in DC, for instance by greying out all the icons. I disagree with this strategy but I understand why. I don’t know quite what troubles you are having, but I’m not sure they are due to encryption.

A screenshot or two would be really helpful. Have you seen the troubleshooting guide for adding a second device?

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I do not have any problems actually, because I do not want to encrypt anything, I never do anything mission critical or sensitive via email, knowing that the whole world could (and will eventually) read those messages anyway. If it is important, I will use some secure messenger for that purpose (like Session, Simplex, Jami, that sort of thing). However, DeltaChat would be fantastic to read/write my normal, unencrypted emails on IMAP servers. Too bad that for some strange reason the developers are hell-bent to make everything encrypted, while still being email. My point was this: imagine YOU want to keep a communication secret and you have 20 friends. In order to achieve that goal, you must persuade ALL of your 20 friends to also encrypt their emails with you. Also, you should kindly ask ALL (!!!) your friends that a) they shouldn’t forward your emails to anybody, or if they do, b) they should persuade THEIR friends to use encryption, too. Now, the probability that anyone can convince that many people to do so is near zero. Hence I gave up long time ago on “encrypted email” and accepted that emails are inherently “unsafe” or “unsecure” ways to communicate. The DeltaChat idea though, to represent those emails in a more pleasant visual format (a “chat”) is a genius idea. Too bad that because of this insistence on encryption I am afraid very soon it will be useless for its main purpose, ie. “email in chat format”. I hope I am wrong and the developers will make a version without encryption (which I cannot force on any of my correspondents anyway), so that the main advantage shines and no more nonsense about encryption that only makes life difficult. :slight_smile: That’s what I think…

It is the message saying “It seems you are using Delta Chat on multiple devices that cannot decrypt each other’s outgoing messages. To fix this, on the older device use “Settings / Add Second Device” and follow the instructions.” that comes from feat: Add device message about outgoing undecryptable messages (#5164) by iequidoo · Pull Request #5176 · chatmail/core · GitHub

It works as intended, Delta Chat detects that user logged in twice in the same mailbox with different profiles, so self-sent messages such as sync messages cannot be decrypted by the other device. This is a broken setup because e.g. pinning a chat will not synchronize between devices etc.

The solution is not to create two different profiles, but do what the message says: create a profile only on one device, then use “add second device” or export profile and import it into other devices.

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Or our society could make encryption the default, so that it happens invisibly in the background of every mail program, and users have to mess with weird config to make their mail unencrypted. That is the idea of Autocrypt.

Despite the best efforts of the standards-writers, the transition is likely to cause some annoying problems in unusual use. I’m sorry you’ve run into some.