Signal Messenger is a great way to securely talk to friends and family. The messaging service offers users an end-to-end encryption protocol to make sure only the folks involved can have access. It also recently got a huge bump by Tesla’s founder Elon Musk’s support on Twitter.
So what’s the problem?
Signal is readily available for mobile for iOS and Android. It’s also available for desktop for Windows, Mac, and even Linux. Unfortunately, there’s no web client and that leaves Chromebooks users without a native solution.
But you said there’s an Android app? Yes. That’s correct, but the Android client is not optimized for Chromebooks and you will be unable to install it through the normal means of the Google Play Store.
Linux has you covered
Despite this omission, Signal can be installed with a workaround by utilizing the Linux app environment Google recently added to Chrome OS. This adds a virtualization layer that allows you to run full Linux desktop apps as “native” ones on your Chromebook.