For tldr, go to the screenshots at the end of the post.
Lately, I have been asked by my dad if you can search in the chat of the Signal messenger not only by words but also by date. So, the first thing I did was look in the app, and after not finding anything, do a bit of research:
With this thread, I thought that this feature does not exist. As a happy open-source fan, the next thing I did was clone the repository of the official Signal Android app (https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android), and then I started to add a new option to the three-point menu of conversations. While reading the code for a few hours, I suddenly found functions for jumping to a specific date and validating that date (e.g. JumpToDateValidator.kt). Then I realized, that the app already had the feature I was about to implement 😆.
So how do you search in a conversation by date? You first have to activate the normal search. Then, nearby but undetected to the left above the keyboard, there is a button which opens a calendar selector!
And there you have it! You can select a date (if it exists) and the conversation will jump to that date!
I afterwards asked myself, do the other messengers have that feature? And yes, both Telegram and WhatsApp can do that too!
Telegram has the button in the same position as Signal…
and Whatsapp has it beside the search bar. Fascinating!
And that’s it. If you came over to this post by looking for this specific feature, I hope I could have helped you, and if not, maybe you learned something new! 😀
