solved: Settings >> Chats >> Chat backups >> Create backup
all the instructions I can find for creating a backup are instructions for transferring my account to another phone, which is not what I’m trying to do. I just want a nice little zip file or something that I can save on some third party storage device.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Backup-and-Restore-Messages
I had tried getting my way through that seven times before making this post before finally realizing that it wasn’t actually telling me how to make a backup up top, it was only telling me how to transfer phones. there is no indication that all the instructions up top were not about how to make a backup, I just kept following them and wondering, when does my backup show up? because the sub-header says that it’s instructions on how to “Use a backup to move your local Signal data to a new Android phone”, implying that at some point along the way here, we will be making a backup, and then I can just not follow any more steps and I have my backup. so I tried searching for the word backup, and it had 67 hits on the page, of which it appears 18 are used correctly. every other time it’s used, the word “transfer” should be in its place.
this isn’t reddit. when somebody asks a question, assume they’ve done the most basic of googling at the very least, because your comment helped 0%.
Then you could have written that from the beginning and saved me the effort to find and post that link.
dude, go back to reddit. you can assume people are fucking morons over there to your heart’s content and you will probably always be right.