Not intuitive how to call a new number on signal-desktop

[archenemies]

• I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates

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Bug Description

I installed the Signal app on my Android phone. Then I installed it on my laptop with Arch Linux. I was able to view an existing conversation from my phone, on my laptop.

However, I can't figure out how to call new people from my laptop.

If there is a way to do this, it is not intuitive. On the left I have a list of contacts/conversations. Above the conversation there are icons like a phone, a magnifying glass, a video camera, and three dots. All these buttons seem to have something to do with the conversation itself. I thought maybe the "File" menu ("everything is a file"?) but there are just items for Preferences, Quit, and something about "Create/upload sticker pack" which opens a blue window. I also don't see anything in keyboard shortcuts.

However, when I open "About Signal Desktop" from the Help menu, there is no indication that this is a beta version without the ability to call new people.

Finally I found that I can type a phone number in the box next to my name, with the magnifying glass. In the Android app, I was able to enter a new number after clicking on a pencil.

I like the simpler interface on signal-desktop but I think it would be more intuitive if in the text box next to the magnifying glass, instead of "Search" it said something like "Search or enter phone number".

[josh-signal]

Thank you for this feedback. Github issues is primarily a place for bugs, the community forums (https://community.signalusers.org/) are a better place for this sort of feedback.

[archenemies]

Thanks for the tip @josh-signal.

Call it what you like, but I guess I would say it's a "bug" if a user can't discover basic functionality from the interface and documentation. The phrase "feature request" sounds like a request for new functionality, which this is not.

I guess if you're going to argue that my difficulty doesn't reflect the experience of a typical user, but was just me being dull, then you could say that I'm asking for a new feature that makes the software accessible to dull users. I'm probably the wrong person to make a judgment on my own intelligence, but it seems like the developers are also going to be biased in their own ways. Of course these questions are going to be hard to discuss if we insist on bouncing the discussion around to different forums on the basis of subjective characterizations that depend on the discussion that hasn't happened yet.

[archenemies]

Here is an example of how Google Voice does it on their web page:

This is the interface I see in signal-desktop:

[stale]

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