I've run into this a couple of times myself. And I've had friends run into it too. We know for a fact someone is using Signal, but you can't find them in the search, even though you have them in your contacts with the correctly formatted number.

Personally, this issue has become a stumbling block for getting people I know to use it more.

[–] PokerChips@programming.dev 2 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Yes this is a problem. They use to have it so that you could see all your contacts and you could use it as your normal messenger app and if they also had signal then you get encryption. At least now you can use a username instead of a phone number. Problem with that is you can only have one username. You can change it but that gets messy.

[–] white_nrdy@programming.dev 3 points 19 hours ago

Does that person allow searching by phone number? That is a setting you can disable.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Do you have to find a person in search to be able to send them a message?

[–] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago

Yes, at least that's been my experience.