Don't show sender's time; show the server's receive time

[chandradeepdey]

• [ ✅] I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates

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Bug Description

Title

Steps to Reproduce

1. Change system time (mine was accidentally set to UTC because I hadn't configured dual boot properly yet)
2. Send a message OR Receive a message

Actual Result:

For a sent message the message appears on all other devices and to the other participant as sent on Windows' system time instead of the correct time. This only happened with Windows, the Linux client worked fine.

For a received message the message appeared on both Signal desktops (Windows and Linux) as received at Windows' system time. The time was correct on Android (Android's system time was correct).

Expected Result:

The time should appear correct regardless of what the client sets the time to.

Platform Info

Signal Version:

1.39.6

Operating System:

Windows 10 19042.746
Arch Linux (rolling)

Linked Device Version:

Android 7.0

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

Can you talk a little bit more about what you believe the 'correct' time should be? Right now we show you what the sender's device thought the time was when it sent it.

[chandradeepdey]

Limit the effect of incorrect time of a device to that particular device

• for received messages the times should be time the message reached the server (server time) and time it reached the current device (device time)
• for sent messages the times should be time it was sent at (device time) and time it reached the first device (server time).

[pyrrhull]

Can confirm this issue. The message being sent from signal desktop on a windows pc with a wrong timezone setting.
The result is that in the chat the timeline doesn't make sense anymore.

[KommX]

The red message in my screenshots below has the following timestamps:

Here's a screenshot from a group chat on Desktop:

The same chat on Android looks like this:

So, as @Makrobios mentioned the message order on Desktop appears to be wrong, but it's correct, because it's sorted by received date, but the sent date is used for the "relative timestamp".

Signal on Android doesn't rely on the sender's time.

@scottnonnenberg-signal Do you need more information? I'm asking because this issue still has the "Need Information" label.

[KommX]

@scottnonnenberg-signal Do you need more information? I'm asking because this issue still has the "Need Information" label.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[KommX]

further activity