IdeaWell

Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

Apple fixes bug that cops used to extract deleted chat messages from iPhones

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

Top 4 Themes in theDiscussion

# Theme Representative Quote
1 Local caching of notification text leaks deleted messages “The main problem, which is notifications text is stored on a DB in the phone outside of signal, is not addressed.” — 6thbit
2 App‑level control of notification previews “I wish it can be disabled for particular apps and not an all or nothing situation.” — elashri
3 Automatic Updates re‑enabled after iOS upgrades, nudging to iOS 26 “Updating iOS will enable Automatic Updates to iOS 26.” — lynndotpy
4 Push notifications are empty; messages are fetched & decrypted client‑side “The push message payload is empty. Upon receiving a message of this type, the Signal app wakes up, fetches the actual messages…” — tadfisher

Each quotation is taken verbatim from the HN comments (double‑quoted) and attributed to its author.

🚀 Project Ideas

Signal Notification Privacy Switch#Summary

  • Adds a per‑app toggle to suppress display of message text in iOS notifications, preventing forensic caching.
  • Eliminates the need for users to manually adjust iOS settings, offering one‑click privacy control.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Signal iOS users worried about message‑content leaks
Core Feature Per‑app “Hide Message Content” switch that disables local notification storage
Tech Stack Swift UI, iOS Notification Service Extension
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • HN users have asked for a native setting to avoid global iOS toggles and prefer an in‑app control.
  • Reduces attack surface for forensic tools that pull from the KnowledgeC DB.

Notification Cache Purger Service

Summary

  • Continuously scans and removes cached notification text entries after a short TTL, stopping long‑term storage.
  • Guarantees that dismissed notifications are not retained for forensic harvesting.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Privacy‑focused iOS users and forensic‑awareness tools
Core Feature Background process that wipes KnowledgeC and BulletinBoard entries after dismissal
Tech Stack Swift background task, Core Data, UserDefaults
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes- Commenters noted that “notifications are cached on the device for up to a month” – this solves that directly.

  • Can be packaged as a system‑wide tweak or an App Store utility for non‑jailbreak devices.

Encrypted Push Notification Framework (EPNF)

Summary

  • Enables apps to send encrypted payloads via APNs/FCM that are decrypted only on the device, removing platform exposure.
  • Provides a standard way to keep push content private while retaining instant wake‑up behavior.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Messaging app developers (Signal, Session, Session‑Lite)
Core Feature Library for generating encrypted notification JSON, key‑pair management, and OS‑level decryption hooks
Tech Stack Rust core, Swift (iOS) wrapper, Kotlin (Android) wrapper
Difficulty High
Monetization Revenue-ready: Open‑core with paid support and enterprise licensing

Notes- Discussed in HN that “push notifications are empty and just tell the app to wake up” – we formalize encryption of those empties.

  • Could become a baseline security layer for any E2E messenger on mobile. ## Granular Notification Content Scheduler

Summary

  • UI that lets users assign per‑contact or per‑chat notification content modes (full, name‑only, none) directly inside the messenger.
  • Gives fine‑grained privacy without relying on OS‑level settings.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Signal and other E2E messenger power users
Core Feature In‑app selector for each conversation to choose “Show Name Only”, “Show No Content”, or “Show Full”
Tech Stack SwiftUI, CoreData, JSON sync backend
Difficulty Low
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • HN users asked “Can it be disabled for particular apps and not an all or nothing situation?” – this answers that need.
  • Aligns with comment “Signal would let me set those Notification Content on a per contact basis”.

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