Crash when enabling custom notification

[hawkraptor]

Guidelines

• I have searched searched open and closed issues for duplicates
• I am submitting a bug report for existing functionality that does not work as intended
• This isn't a feature request or a discussion topic

Bug description

Hello,

I recently reinstalled and recovered my Signal backup after installing Android 15 (previously on Android 13). I attempted to updated the custom notifications for some of my Signal chats, and for some chats the application would crash and restart without allowing me to set a custom notification sound.
I narrowed this down to chats that had previously used custom notification sounds prior to reinstalling Android and restoring my Signal backup. Chats with no previously configured custom notification sounds had no issue enabling and changing the notification sound from the default to a custom sound using the Android sound picker.
I looked at the debug log and found this line:

[7.41.3] [216 ] 2025-05-12 21:27:30.656 MST E SignalUncaughtException: java.lang.SecurityException: UID 10215 does not have permission to content://media/external/audio/media/1000061989?title=Amogus%20Body&canonical=1 [user 0]

It seems to point to a previously configured custom notification sound that Signal can no longer access, my guess is due to some change in storage when Android was reinstalled.
Unfortunately, since I cannot find any way to reset these to default or change them at all without first enabling custom notifications (and attempting the fatal file access), I cannot adjust or reset the custom notifications for these chats without crashing the app.

Based on results online, I attempted to grant android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE via ADB but with no success.

Muting notifications in Signal has no effect.
Disabling, changing, or resetting notification options in the Android notification settings also does not affect this, as this is a setting specifically within Signal.
I also attempted to change the sound for the matching Android Conversation, but it seems like Signal does not allow those changes to populate Signal chat settings (which makes sense).
However, setting a custom notification sound in the Conversations page in Android does seem to override this, so it is a viable workaround for me.

Screenshots

No response

Device

Motorola Moto One 5G Ace

Android version

15

Signal version

7.41.3

Link to debug log

https://debuglogs.org/android/7.41.3/8be66854c5b8b1dbeed4478b0b38b3d09bec75ff7672128c336b7602abf3ed4b

[cody-signal]

Thanks for the extra details and initial exploratory work. We'll look into it!

[hawkraptor]

Posting an update because I was able to fix this in a sort of roundabout way.

On one of my chats I set both a notification sound in the Android Conversations settings (which I believe Signal leverages for notification sounds), and a Contact ringtone for standard phone calls. After receiving a Signal voice call, it played the previously-defined Signal custom ringtone, and I was then able to enable/disable/change custom notifications in Signal as expected.

On a second chat I did similar with the Conversations sound in the Android settings, and then in ADB also ran "appops set org.thoughtcrime.securesms READ_MEDIA_AUDIO allow".
after running the ADB command, the chat began to show custom notifications as enabled, with a number string for the custom ringtone instead of the previous sound name. Screenshot attached with the result.

After this I am able to change custom ringtones in Signal for my other previously-problematic chats as well.

Also, apologies for blasting the heart react, I forgot that those send tons of email updates.

[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.