Telegram, a popular instant messaging application and competitor to WhatsApp, released the Stories feature to its premium users last month, and now the feature is available for everyone.

The announcement about the Stories feature being available for everyone on Telegram comes as the company celebrates its 10th anniversary.

The Stories feature on Telegram is similar to what other platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram offer. However, unlike other platforms, it has one feature that sets it apart from others; Telegram allows users to edit Stories after posting.

There are some customizable options, including the ability to choose who can see stories, how long they last, and whether or not they can be saved by others. Premium users also have access to additional features, such as the ability to view others’ stories in stealth mode, a permanent view history, and the ability to save stories to their gallery.

Making the announcement, the company said in a blog post, “This was by far the most-requested feature in the history of Telegram – and we’ve spent several months innovating and refining the format. Telegram Stories have all the things you’d expect – and plenty more that have never been done before.”

To use this new feature, users simply have to open the Telegram app and tap on the “Stories” icon located at the bottom bar. From there, they start creating a new story by tapping the “+” icon, and once done, choose who can see them by tapping the “Share” button or setting a timer for how long it will be available for others to see.

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In an announcement today, Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, unveiled the forthcoming addition of the Stories feature to the popular messaging app. The new feature, which is set to debut in early July, follows years of persistent user demand, as more than half of all feature requests received by Telegram pertained to the integration of Stories.

The Rise of Stories on Telegram: Responding to User Demand

Initially, Telegram was reluctant to integrate this feature, citing its ubiquitous presence across various platforms. However, responding to user demand, the company has decided to move forward with it. The implementation of Stories on Telegram will give users the ability to control their Stories’ visibility, ranging from making it available for everyone, to only specific contacts or a group of close friends. The stories will appear in an expandable section on top of the users’ chat list.

In a user-friendly feature, Telegram will provide the option to hide Stories posted by certain contacts. This can be done by moving the specific contact’s Stories to the “Hidden” list within the Contacts section. Additionally, users can add captions, links and tag other users in their Stories. A unique feature to be introduced allows users to simultaneously post photos and videos captured by both front and rear cameras.

Furthermore, users can decide the expiration duration for their Stories, with options to have them disappear in six, 12, 24, or 48 hours. There’s also an option to keep the Stories permanently displayed on the user’s profile page, resembling Instagram’s Story highlights feature.

Telegram hopes this feature will enrich user-profiles and foster a more intimate connection between contacts. According to Durov, it will also benefit channels by allowing more exposure and subscribers, with the soon-to-be-introduced ability to repost messages from channels to stories.

After internal testing of the Stories feature, even the initially skeptical Telegram team members expressed their appreciation for it. Stories are currently in the final testing stage and Durov anticipates that they will “herald a new era on Telegram”, enhancing the social media aspects of the platform.

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Telegram is a cloud-based instant messaging app that offers users a fast, secure, and reliable way to communicate with their friends, family, and colleagues. It was founded in 2013 by brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, and has since grown to become one of the most popular messaging apps in the world. Telegram supports end-to-end encryption, meaning that messages and calls are protected by a unique encryption key that only the sender and recipient can access. It also offers features such as group chats, voice calls, and the ability to send files up to 2GB in size. Additionally, Telegram has a robust API that enables developers to create bots, games, and other services that can be integrated into the app. The new update to Telegram brings forth exciting features to the app.

Telegram gets Shareable Chats, Custom Wallpapers & Improved Bots

Telegram has announced several new features and improvements that will enhance the user experience. Among the new features are shareable chat folders, custom wallpapers, and better bots. Users will now be able to share entire chat folders with a single link, making it easier to invite friends to groups or collections of news channels. Custom wallpapers can also be created from favourite photos and colour combinations and used in specific chats. Bots have also been improved, with the ability to host web apps that support collaboration and multiplayer features in groups.

Additionally, scrolling for attachments is now faster, and there are numerous interface improvements. Group members will now be able to see what time messages were read, a quality-of-life improvement for those in groups with less than 100 members. Users of the newest iPhones will also enjoy new animations when scrolling through profile pictures. These new features make Telegram an even better option for those looking for a fast, secure, and feature-rich messaging app.

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(Via)

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Telegram, one of the world’s most popular messaging apps, has released a new update that includes various enhancements and new features for its users. One of the update’s highlights is a new Power Saving mode that helps Android users to manage the performance and battery life of the application in their smartphone. This feature would help users with a less powerful smartphone or someone who is dealing with battery-draining issues.

Users can use the Power Saving mode to change settings such as autoplay animations, effects, and background updates. Users can also customize it to switch on automatically when the battery reaches a certain percentage. The mode is particularly beneficial for lower-end Android smartphones that may struggle with Telegram’s rich media and animations.

The Power Saving option can lower CPU utilisation by up to 40% and RAM usage by up to 30%, according to a blog post from Telegram. Users of Android devices may experience improved performance and better battery life as a result. You can enter the mode by going to Settings > Power Saving.

Along with the Power Saving mode, Telegram has also added new animated emoji, granular playback speed options for voice messages and videos, read time indicators for small groups, auto-send invite links for contacts who join Telegram, dynamic sticker pack order based on usage frequency, translated bot descriptions in various languages, improved iOS folder support, and more. Users of Android and iOS can get the most recent update from their respective app stores.

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Source

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Skype has been around for a long time as one of the pioneers of voice and video calling over the internet. But in recent years, it has faced stiff competition from other messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram, which offer more features and privacy options. However, Skype is not giving up without a fight. The service, owned by Microsoft, has just introduced a new AI-powered Bing chatbot that can make your conversations more fun, informative and productive.

The new Bing chatbot is integrated into Skype chat and can be accessed by typing @Bing in any group conversation. You can ask it anything you would normally ask on Bing.com or Microsoft Edge, such as trivia questions, news headlines, weather forecasts, flight and hotel information, etc. But that’s not all. The Bing chatbot can also generate ideas, and recommendations and draft messages for you based on your preferences and context.

For example, if you are planning a trip with your friends on Skype group chat, you can tag @Bing and ask it to suggest some destinations, activities and attractions based on your budget and interests. The Bing chatbot will then provide you with relevant web links, images and videos to help you decide. According to Microsoft, you can also ask it to book flights and hotels for you directly from Skype using Microsoft Pay.

Another cool feature of the new Bing chatbot is that it can help you write better messages by offering suggestions based on natural language processing (NLP) technology. For instance, if you want to send a birthday greeting to your friend on Skype but don’t know what to say, you can type @Bing followed by “birthday message” and it will generate some options for you to choose from or edit as you like.

The new Bing chatbot is not only useful but also entertaining. It can tell jokes, stories, poems and even rap lyrics if you ask it nicely. It can also play games with you such as trivia quizzes or tic-tac-toe. And if you are feeling bored or lonely, you can just have a casual chat with it about anything.

The new Bing chatbot is a game-changer for Skype users who want to have more engaging and creative conversations with their contacts. It also gives Skype an edge over other messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram which do not have such an advanced AI assistant built-in.

However, the new Bing chatbot is not perfect yet. With our editor, Leo’s time playing around with it, he noticed it still has some limitations that need to be addressed in future updates. For example:

• The Bing chatbot cannot listen to audio messages or access photos and videos in chat.
• The Bing chatbot may not always understand complex queries or slang terms.
• The Bing chatbot may sometimes give inaccurate or inappropriate responses due to data sources or algorithms.

Despite these drawbacks, the new Bing chatbot is still an impressive addition to Skype that shows how AI technology can enhance social messaging platforms. If you want to learn how to use Bing in Skype yourself, you can visit our guide here.

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Telegram is once again showing its commitment to delivering a top-notch user experience with its latest update. As per tradition, Telegram has released a fresh set of features to enhance its messaging app for both Android and iOS users, and this time around, the update is packed with exciting new tools. One of the standout features in the update is the profile photo maker, which allows users to transform stickers or animated emojis into an eye-catching profile picture for their accounts, groups, and channels. The best part is that the feature is available to all users, regardless of whether they have a Premium subscription or not.

Another new addition is real-time message translation, a tool that promises to make cross-language communication a breeze. People who have contacts in different countries could really benefit from this feature since they can benefit from the convenience of conversation in multiple languages. With the Translate bar at the top of the app, users can translate entire chats, groups, and channels with ease. This feature is, however, reserved for Telegram’s Premium users.

The new update also includes a detailed pie chart that shows the amount of mobile and Wi-Fi data used by the app. The auto-download settings can be customized to meet your preferences if you intend to save data while using Telegram in the future. Furthermore, the update features a new media menu that gives users complete control over when media is saved to their gallery. With options to filter by size, type, and chat, this feature is sure to be a lifesaver for those who like to keep their media organized.

Last but not least, Telegram has made finding the perfect emoji easier than ever with its new emoji categories. Users can now access the emoji panel and zoom in on any emoji to get a better look before sending.

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Earlier this month, Pavel Durov, who is the founder and CEO of Telegram confirmed that a premium plan for telegram is in the works. Now, the company has officially debuted the said premium plan. The paid tier is priced at Rs 469 in India and will cost between  $5 – $6 in the United States. So, let’s take a look at all the new perks it brings along.

The first major feature coming with the premium tier is the ability to send files up to 4GB in size. This gives users an additional 2GB of wiggle room over the existing 2GB limit on the free version of Telegram. The premium also allows faster downloads with the official blog post saying “You can access everything in your unlimited cloud storage as fast as your network can keep up.”

Premium tier users will also get an increase in the limits of things they can do on Telegram. They can follow up to 1,000 channels, create up to 20 chat folders with up to 200 chats each, add a fourth account to any Telegram app, pin 10 chats in the main list, and much more. One interesting feature offered with the premium tier is the Voice-to-Text feature which is capable of converting voice messages into text messages making it pretty convenient for instances when you receive a voice note that you can currently listen to. Other than that, users get access to exclusive premium stickers, an animated profile picture, a premium badge, and much more. And of course, premium users will also stop seeing ads that sometimes appear in public groups in certain countries.

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Earlier, there were rumors that Telegram is working on a paid subscription plan. Today, Pavel Durov, the messaging app’s founder and CEO, confirmed that the Telegram Premium plan is indeed in development and will be launched by the end of this month.

Telegram Premium will be launching later in June and it will bring some extra features for the more demanding users. Premium users will have a higher limit for chats, media, and file uploads, Durov said in a blog post.

Durov claimed that the existing features in the free version will not be degraded and in fact, plenty of new features will soon be added to it. Furthermore, he stated that even users who do not subscribe to Telegram Premium will be able to take advantage of some of its features, such as viewing extra-large documents, media, and stickers sent by Premium users, or tapping to add Premium reactions already pinned to a message to react in the same way.

Durov stated that the Premium service is meant to respond to user demand for more storage/bandwidth without destroying Telegram’s ability to provide a free service to everyone else.

“After giving it some thought, we realized that the only way to let our most demanding fans get more while keeping our existing features free is to make those raised limits a paid option,” says Durav.

The exact details of the Premium plan are not known yet. However, previous reports have suggested that paid tier will cost $4.99 per month. The prices may vary for different regions.

Following privacy concerns with rival messaging app WhatsApp, owned by Meta Platforms, Telegram has seen an increase in users. According to its website, Telegram currently has 500 million monthly active users and is one of the top ten most downloaded apps in the world.

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Telegram is one of the most popular messaging apps. The app often comes into the discussion for its robust online privacy and security. Like every other app or service, Telegram also needs to monetize itself to keep the platform up and running. The messaging app recently started an ad platform for public one-to-many channels, and now it appears that the company will launch a Premium version with extra features that users will have to pay for.

Recently while testing the latest beta version 8.7.2 of the Telegram iOS app, the Telegram Beta channel discovered a variety of reaction emojis and stickers that have been labeled as Telegram Premium exclusives. If users select these stickers and emojis, they will be asked to register for the paid service.

source: @tgbeta

Free users are barred from viewing the premium stickers in a conversation thread, and they’ll also be prompted to subscribe to the premium service. The premium users will also get a gradient star icon next to their username.

Currently, these premium features are only available in tests and more details regarding the pricing and how the users will be able to sign up are yet to be known.

Another feature known as the Avatar creator has been detected by the r/telegram subreddit. Apparently, this feature will let users combine gradients with emoji, stickers, or a monogram to create simple or patterned avatars. This was found in the macOS beta.

The appearance of Telegram premium in beta indicates that a paid subscription of the messaging app might be close. Telegram is yet to make an official statement regarding the same.

What are your thoughts about the Telegram premium? Will you put your money into it, or you are happy with the free version? Let us know in the comments.

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Brazil’s Supreme Court on Sunday revoked the nationwide ban on messaging app Telegram after it successfully complied with the court orders and the country’s laws.

For those unaware, Brazil’s Supreme court had issued a ban on Telegram as the messaging app failed to comply with the court’s orders regarding an arrest warrant issued in the name of a blogger Allan dos Santos who is an ally of the current president Jair Bolsonaro and has been accused of spreading fake news via Telegram. The activist, a fugitive now based in the United States, has remained active on Telegram.

Telegram had also ignored requests from Brazilian authorities, including a police request to block profiles and provide information linked to the blogger. Telegram had also failed to name a legal representative in Brazil, unlike its competitors

The court had given Telegram till Sunday to comply with its orders. Telegram founder Pavel Durov responded by apologizing for the company’s “negligence” in replying to court orders and the company also complied by blocking the accounts spreading misinformation.

Telegram also appointed Alan Campos Elias Thomaz as its legal representative in Brazil, the court statement said, fulfilling a key request.

The Supreme Court statement of Justice Moraes said Telegram had shown “full compliance.” He also added, “I revoke the decision of complete suspension of the operation of Telegram in Brazil.”

This move by Moraes has given birth to debates regarding freedom of speech and fake news. The supporters of Bolsonaro on the right are calling this judicial overreach.

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(Via)

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Justice Alexandre De Moraes of Brazil’s Supreme Court on Friday ordered the shutdown of messaging app Telegram nationwide, arguing it has not cooperated with Brazilian authorities.

The shutdown comes in light of ignorance of previous orders regarding an arrest warrant issued in name of a blogger Allan dos Santos who is an ally of the current president Jaire Bolsonaro and has been spreading fake news on telegram. The activist, a fugitive now based in the United States, has remained active on Telegram

Telegram also ignored requests from Brazilian authorities, including a police request to block profiles and provide information linked to the blogger. The justice added that Telegram has also failed to name a legal representative in Brazil, unlike its competitors.

Many of Bolsonaro’s supporters have turned to Telegram since the messaging app’s competitor WhatsApp changed its policies on message sharing. Bolsonaro and his allies have encouraged followers to join Telegram since January 2021.

In January, Bolsonaro was asked by supporters what he thought about investigations into Telegram. He said, “It is cowardice what they are trying to do to Brazil.”  The president has also, often accused de Moraes and Brazil’s top court of rulings that go against freedom of speech.

One of the telegram’s founders, Pavel Durov, said in a statement that Telegram “had an issue with emails going between our telegram.org corporate addresses and the Brazilian Supreme Court. As a result of this miscommunication, the Court ruled to ban Telegram for being unresponsive.”

“I apologize to the Brazilian Supreme Court for our negligence. We definitely could have done a better job,” Durov said. “We complied with an earlier court decision in late February and responded with a suggestion to send future takedown requests to a dedicated email address. Unfortunately, our response must have been lost, because the Court used the old general-purpose email address in further attempts to reach us.”

Durov also asked the court to “consider delaying its ruling for a few days at its discretion to allow us to remedy the situation by appointing a representative in Brazil and setting up a framework to react to future pressing issues like this in an expedited manner.”

Telegram’s services remained active till Friday evening and fact-checking website Aos-Fatos which has been monitoring pro-Bolsonaro pages on telegram reported that several supporters of the Brazilian president have been sharing tutorials on how to install virtual private networks (VPNs) so they could continue using Telegram.

Bolsonaro has also promised to keep sharing messages on an alternative messaging app Gettr, which was founded by former Trump adviser Jason Miller.

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(Via)

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Back in December, Telegram introduced a major update that brought some highly anticipated privacy features like deleting messages by date, managing connected devices, anonymous posting in public groups, and more. Now, the messaging platform has put out the version 8.5 update that makes it even easier to use while making the process of chatting more fun and enjoyable.

The company states that this update brings easy-to-make video stickers, better reactions with compact animations and extra emoji, a button to review unseen reactions, improved navigation between chats, and more. so let’s take a closer look at these new features.

Video Stickers

Telegram has made it easier for users to create video stickers by adding support for stickers converted from regular videos. This feature now requires you to just upload a video that you want to be made in a sticker to the Stickers bot in .WEBM format.

Better Reactions

The update adds more compact animations to reactions. Users can press and hold the reaction in the menu to send a larger effect. In addition to that, users also get read status for reactions, meaning if someone reacted to your message and you haven’t seen it yet, a new ♡ button will appear on the chat or in the corner of the chat if you currently have the conversation open.

New Reactions and Interactive Emoji

Telegram has added 5 new reactions to its for users to be able to display a wider range of emotions. These stickers also double as interactive emoji and also offer full-screen effects in private chats.

Navigating Recent Chats

Telegram users can now press and hold the “Back” button to view all their recent chats in a small popup list. They can then use it as a shortcut to switch between chats. Opening chats from forwarded messages, links, usernames, profiles, etc. adds the chat to the list.

Bug fixes and more

Telegram says that they have focused on fixing known issues with the January update. The update brings improved call quality, added support for translation to Instant View pages (and bios on iOS), added the option to send silent messages from the sharing menu – and many more improvements. The iOS version also has new animations which can be explored by tapping icons in the tab bar.

You can check out Telegram’s complete change list for more details on this new version 8.5 update.

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Earlier today, Telegram announced a new update to its chat app via a blog post. The company stated that this new update brings tools to prevent others from saving content in groups and channels, the ability to delete messages from specific dates, new ways to manage your connected devices, an option to post anonymously in public groups on behalf of your channel and more. So let’s take a deeper look at these new features.

Protected Content in Groups and Channels

With this update, Telegram helps creators protect the content they publish and ensure that it is available only for their intended audience.

Group and Channel owners who want to keep their content members-only can restrict message forwarding from their chat, preventing screenshots and limiting the ability to save media from posts.

Delete Messages by Date

Telegram users can delete any messages from a conversation at any time, and with this update, it’s been made even more convenient as you can now clear chat history from a specific day or date range in any one-on-one chat.

You can use this new feature by tapping on the date bar that pops up as you scroll through the chat, which will open the calendar. From there, you can choose which days you want to clear.

Manage Connected Devices

Telegram lets you use your account on all your devices simultaneously, and the devices menu helps you control where your account is logged in. The company has added a new button to quickly link a desktop device via QR code scanning and a setting to log out inactive devices after some time automatically

Additionally, the update enables even more control over your linked devices as you can now tap any device in the list to view more information and toggle whether it can accept calls or new Secret Chats.

Anonymous Posting in Public Groups

Public Groups and Channel Comments allow for discussions of any topic in massive communities with thousands of members. Now, you can represent your channel in these group discussions with the new ability to ‘appear as a channel’ when sending messages in these chats.

To access this functionality, you can tap the profile picture next to the message bar and choose one of your channels – the messages you send after that will appear with the name and photo of the channel instead of your personal account.

In addition to these features, many more have come to Telegram in this update, including login via phone call, new global chat themes for Android, and Live Text Recognition in multiple languages for iOS 13+ (via).

The inclusion of these new features makes Telegram even more appealing and leaves much to be desired from the dominant chat service, WhatsApp, which is sorely lacking in the variety of privacy and convenience features.

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Smartphone users usually have a number of social media platform that they are active on daily. Out of these, there are specific apps that are geared for just messaging. While these apps may sometime contain sensitive information that the user wants to keep private, a leaked document has revealed that two major chatting apps, WhatsApp and iMessage, share quite a bit of data with the FBI.

According to a report from the Rolling Stone (Via AndroidAuthority), the news arrives from a leaked document from FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), which is a domestic intelligence and security based government service in the US. The document has revealed that Facebook’s WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage provide the agency with the most amount of information, which it can legally obtain from any messaging application.

As per the document, WhatsApp, iMessage, and Line all offered “limited” message content over a legal request from the FBI. While these platforms willingly offered ‘some’ data, others like Signal, Telegram, Threema, Viber, WeChat, and Wickr did not disclose any message content. Although “limited” data doesn’t raise any alarms, the kind of information being shared might not be that harmless. The popular Android messaging app shares “only basic subscriber records” with a subpoena.

But in simpler terms, it means that the FBI is able to grab address book data from both the ‘target’ and their contacts if they have a search warrant. They can even track the source and destination of the messages sent from the app as well. Meaning, if you have saved the target’s contact info, your address book is also available for the FBI to snoop around in. This is even worse for the iMessage service. If iMessage users back up their messages on iCloud, the FBI has access to the actual message content as the Cupertino based giant is required to hand over iCloud encryption key with a search warrant.

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Chat app Telegram is getting a new Sponsored Messages feature that will allow anyone to promote their own channel or bot. Sponsored messages will be displayed in public channels with at least a thousand subscribers and will be limited to 160 characters. They will be based solely on the topic of the public channels they’re shown in.

Telegram further emphasized the privacy bits as always, stating that no user data is mined or analyzed to display ads, and every user viewing a particular channel on Telegram sees the same sponsored messages. No ads will be shown in chats either and sponsored messages will not appear in your chat list, private chats, or groups.

Telegram hopes that the tool will help eliminate the need for posting ads on channels in the form of regular messages, in favor of the more user-friendly and less chaotic sponsored messages.

It is worth mentioning though that the sponsored messages feature is still under testing and is thus not available to everyone.

“Once they are fully launched and allow Telegram to cover its basic costs (such as equipment and data centers that are used by channel admins to deliver their content to our hundreds of millions of users), we plan to start sharing ad revenue with the admins of the channels where Sponsored Messages are displayed – because it is fair,” Telegram said in a statement.

The messaging service went on to compare itself with WhatsApp, emphasizing that the latter shares user data with advertisers, even though they don’t show ads themselves. WhatsApp lacks a channels function, and therefore, if you use Telegram the way you use WhatsApp, you will never be seeing ads.

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Telegram, an application for instant messaging, has said that the platform gained more than 70 million new users during the Facebook outage on Monday as people across the world were left without key messaging services for about six hours.

A couple of days ago, Facebook suffered an outage on its network for around six hours during which all of its services, including Messenger, social media platform Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp, were inaccessible for users globally.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov said that “the daily growth rate of Telegram exceeded the norm by an order of magnitude, and we welcomed over 70 million refugees from other platforms in one day.”

He also added that some of the users of the platform in the United States may have experienced slower speeds as millions rushed to sign up at the same time, but that the service worked as usual for the majority of users.

Telegram recently topped one billion downloads and earlier this year, the platform had over 500 million monthly active users.

It’s not just Telegram that benefited from Facebook’s problem. Signal, which is a competitor of WhatsApp and Telegram, also said that millions of new users joined the platform for secure messaging.

Also, this isn’t the first time Telegram and Signal gained millions of new users at the expense of Facebook. Recently, when WhatsApp updated its privacy policy and struggled to explain it properly, both platforms added millions of new users.

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Earlier today (21st September 2021), Telegram Messenger launched a new update that brings a number of key features. In its latest monthly update, the messaging platform will now offer Interactive Emoji and New Chat Themes.

Chat Themes

Telegram is known to offer a number of features to organize and customize chats. This includes options like Chat Folders, Animated Backgrounds, and more. Now, the latest inclusion are the new Chat Themes. The latest update lets users come together in creating new themes for their personal chats. Furthermore, the application is also offering 8 new themes that the users can apply to specific private chats. These new themes offer colorful gradient message bubbles, attractive animated backgrounds, and unique backgrounds.

Interactive Emoji

Along with the Chat Themes, the company has also added new Interactive Emojis. Users can now simply send a singly emoji to any private chat by tapping on the animated emoji to send a full screen effect. If both the sender and receiver have their chat private windows open, a special animation will play which will also vibrate the device simultaneously on both parties’ smartphones. This makes the chat more interactive and offers additional expressions to the text based platform.

Other features launched in the latest update includes read receipts in small groups, which was previously only available in personal chats. Additionally, users can now also record live streams and video chats. For those unaware, Telegram hosts millions of communities that can create live events for unlimited viewers. Admins are now also capable of recording these Live Streams and Video Chats as well.

RELATED:

• Telegram Beta adds gets new features including screen sharing
• Telegram tops the chart of most downloaded apps worldwide for January 2021
• Telegram rolls new update to import chat history from other apps like WhatsApp

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When it comes to instant messaging apps, Telegram is ahead in terms of features, especially when compared to WhatsApp. The messaging app is cementing its lead with a handful of new and interesting features including screen sharing which have now been made available for the beta version.

The latest update to Telegram beta according to Testing Catalog brings multiple new features. Among them is Screen Sharing during a video call. This can come in handy when you need to help an older relative with their device. To turn on this feature, you will have to first press the “Stop Video” button, then start it again. You will get three options at the bottom of the screen one of which is “Phone Screen”. Select this and follow the prompts to begin sharing your screen with the caller on the other end.

Telegram has also added support for adjusting video playback speed. You will remember that WhatsApp recently added support for adjusting playback speeds for voice notes. Telegram now lets you speed through those long videos forwarded to you. The speed menu also has options for slowing down playback speeds too.

Another feature that has been added is the ability to clear a chat history older than one month. Previously, you could only do this for chat histories a week old. There is also support for playing short videos in a floating window when you are scrolling.

To get to experience these new features, you will have to manually get the app yourself as there is no way to join the beta program from the Play Store like you have for some apps. Android Police reports that the APK for Telegram Beta is available on the Microsoft App center.

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Sensor Tower has released its download numbers for January 2021, with Telegram leading the pack as it was the most downloaded non-gaming app worldwide with more than 63 million installs, which was about 4 times its downloads one year ago. India accounted for 24% of Telegram downloads within the past month with more than 15 million installs. The second-highest number of Telegram downloads came from Indonesia with over 6 million.

The full top 10 rankings of non-gaming apps worldwide by downloads for January 2021 was compiled by Sensor Tower using estimates from Sensor Tower’s Store Intelligence platform.

TikTok was the second most downloaded non-gaming app worldwide last month with close to 62 million installs. The countries with the largest number of TikTok installs were China, with over 10.5 million installs (17%), followed by the United States, with more than 6 million (10%).

Signal, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, ZOOM, MX Taka Tak, Snapchat, and Facebook Messenger are the other apps that were in the top ten most installed non-gaming apps worldwide for the month of January 2021.

Store Intelligence registered users would be able to view additional content like an overview of the app’s performance over time and several other performance metrics.

Sensor Tower has also provided the top app downloads for January 2021 via the App Store and Google Play Store. TikTok, YouTube, ZOOM, Telegram, and Facebook were the top five non-gaming app downloads on the App Store, while the corresponding apps on the Google Play Store were Telegram, Signal, TikTok, MX Taka Tak, and Facebook.

The estimates include downloads for the App Store and Google Play Store from January 1, 2021, to January 31, 2021. It is noted that Apple apps and Google pre-installed apps were not included in the data, as they consist of unique installs only.

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• TikTok now warns users when a video containing unverified information is being shared

(source)

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WhatsApp faced a backlash recently after it changed its privacy policy and terms of service. As a result, people started moving to other platforms and alternatives like Telegram witnessed a surge in downloads. In a bid to sustain and seize the opportunity, the latter is now rolling an update to import chat history from other apps.

In a blog post, Telegram shares how to migrate the chats from other social media Apps. The company, which has witnessed 100 million downloads in January, says users can import the chat including videos, documents. Currently, supported apps include WhatsApp, Line, and KakaoTalk.

To move a Chat across the App on Android/iOS, just press export Chats and select Telegram on the Share menu that appears. Precisely, you can follow the steps below:

• Android: Open the Donor App(eg. WhatsApp)-> Individual Chat/Group->tap ⋮ > More > Export Chat, then choose Telegram on Share Menu.
• iOS: Similarly, Open the WhatsApp->Contact Info/Group Info page in WhatsApp, tap Export Chat, then choose Telegram in the Share menu.

Note: In iOS, you can also export chats directly by swiping left on Chat->Export

As soon as you do this, the messages will get migrated to Telegram including Timestamps to the current day. This means the same User/Group, whose chat is migrated will be notified and can see the messages.

Telegram, which stores all the data in Cloud, saves Space too as you can delete the local storage(incl. Messages, Doc, Videos) and re-download it whenever needed.

Apart from the migration feature, Telegram’s new update also brings other improvements to Privacy. For instance, you can now delete groups, secret chats, and call history for everyone at the same time.

Other features like improved audio players, voice chats with volume controls for each chat, improved accessibility with TalkBack and VoiceOver, report fake channels/groups(Profile->tap ‘…’ > Report > Fake Account), Greeting stickers for new chats, and more.

Android users get better animations when downloading files, playing music, or loading chats. If we recall, the last update brought voice chats, with revamped animations and SD card support.

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After the recent WhatsApp privacy changes went live, the userbase numbers of its alternatives Signal and Telegram have surged almost immediately. In just a short span, both messaging platforms have seen millions of new users download their respective applications.

Talking about Signal first, the messaging app has seen a large influx of new users, with the company seeing new downloads nearing a million every day. For those unaware, Facebook recently updates its privacy policy for WhatsApp and other platforms, which has led it to receive a lot of criticism over its users’ data security and privacy. Since then, many have switched over to alternatives like Signal, which saw over 810,000 downloads just last Sunday alone. This marked a near 18 fold growth in just a week, as per an ETNews report.

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For those unaware, WhatsApp’s latest privacy policy has the company reserve the right to share user data, including location, phone number, with its parent company Facebook and its other social media platforms like Instagram and Messenger. Similar to Signal, Telegram has also seen a massive influx of new users, with the platform seeing 25 million new downloads in just the past 72 hours. Out of this figure, 38 percent of all new users are from Asia.

Other regions like Europe account for 27 percent, while Latin America and MENA regions account for 21 percent and 8 percent respectively. With the world becoming more privacy conscious, the move from WhatsApp has basically led to a mass exodus from the app to other platforms, which offer better privacy standards and user data protection. It remains to be seen how WhatsApp responds to its current predicament.

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Telegram seems to emphasize more on engaging Group activities. Back in October, it brought comment sections, anonymous admins to Public Channels. Now, it has made quite the jump in improving the virtual office-like experience with the latest update. The new update brings always-on Voice Chats, SD storage support, and more.

Telegram, in its blog post, explains the benefits of using Voice chats. According to the company, the new Voice Chat is not a mere replacement to Voice call but it “achieves similar goals”. Precisely, Groups can now turn on this feature and become a Voice Chat room similar to Discord App’s features.

Voice Chats

You can create a Voice Chat for your group by navigating to a Group’s Profile-> Tap (⋮)->Start Voice Chat. After joining a chat, users can do other things in the App. If you go into the same group, you can see a special bar at the top which shows who is talking at that moment. Telegram says that individuals also get a dedicated chat and microphone toggles to access anytime.

Android users also get a full-fledged experience with a system-wide floating widget functionality.  The float shows three options- Speaker, Mic, Leave button. The Voice Chat, as Telegram says, can include a few thousand participants but a definitive limit is not known.

Credits: Telegram

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EDITOR’S PICK: WhatsApp now requires a minimum of Android 4.0.3 and iOS 9

For Desktop mode, Voice Chats also get a Push-to-talk shortcut. Even when the window isn’t live, you can hold the SPACEBAR key to go live and voice your message. In any case, Future updates will bring improvements like Noise cancellation, video, and screen sharing.

Other Additions

Apart from Voice Chats, stickers get a nifty-little update where an outline will show before the animation sticker is loaded. On Android, Telegram has added improvements to animations for the New Message button, opening profiles, managing chat folders.

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We also get a new set of animated emojis this time just like the earlier update. An update to Android also includes the option to Telegram Data to SD card. As for iOS and Android, users can now tap on Photo sent to quickly edit and resend it. iOS also gets a Siri reading messages on headphones. You can toggle it in iOS settings->Notifications > Announce Messages.

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Telegram is probably the best messaging platform for power users. It is arguably better than most globally available messaging apps. But it is not as popular as WhatsApp and iMessage due to its complexity, which actually makes it better. Anyway, Telegram users can rejoice as the app has been now updated with more useful features.

Pinned Messages 2.0

With the new update, users can now pin multiple messages in chats. They can switch between them by tapping on the top bar or view all of them on a separate page by tapping on the new button located at the right side of the top bar.

Above all, pinned messages now also work in one-on-one chats, in addition to channels and groups.

Live Locations 2.0

Live location feature now allows users to set up an alert when they come closer to friends who shared their live location. Also, the icons on the map now show in which direction they are facing.

Playlists

When users share multiple songs together, Telegram will now automatically arrange them in a playlist. Hence, users can directly play them in the built-in media player. Additionally, in case of files, they will be bundled together in a single chat bubble just like photo albums.

Channel Post Stats

Admins now have access to stats of individual posts in the channel as well as a list of public channels to which a post was forwarded to. This will clearly help a lot of channels as the admins can now know more about how their posts perform.

New Animations on Android

The latest update also brings new animations on Android for sending messages and switching songs in the music player. That’s not all, Android users can now edit pictures in view mode and share them without download-upload.

New Animated Emojis

Last but not least, the update also brings new spooky animated emoji ahead of Halloween along with Jackpot animated emojis.

Having said that, the new Telegram update is already live on the Google Play Store and Apple Store for Android and iOS devices respectively.

UP NEXT: Telegram’s new update adds Comment sections for Channels, Anonymous Admins, and more

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Cloud-based messaging service Telegram has brought a bucket load of features through a new update. The updates include features like categorized search filters, comment sections for channels, anonymous admins, and more.

Telegram trough a blog explains the new features landing in the app via the latest update. It says the latest update will focus on helping the admins manage the content shared whilst maintaining civility and safety of the interaction.

Search Filters

Search Filters now has six categories- Chats, Media, Links, File, Video, and Voice messages. Users can enter a search term pertaining to a particular time, person, group/channel, bot. And, the filter will segregate the message accordingly. For instance, we can search “Joel + 15th August”. This will display a particular message on that day by the person.

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Editor’s Pick: Telegram adds video editor, two-step verification, cache management tool, and more

Comments for Channels and Anonymous admins for Groups

Next, Telegram has brought a new comment section inside the Channels. A comment button will appear on the messages posted on the Channels. Users can post GIF, voice messages, stickers, and more as a comment to that post. Also, Telegram says that admins can control the comments of the channel to maintain the courtesy. That said, the feature will be available only to Channels which have a separate discussion group linked within. This is because users will be redirected to that group to see and reply to those comments.

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Additionally, Telegram introduces a new feature called Anonymous Group admins. The feature is already available for Channels and now will turn even admins to anonymous in Groups while sending messages. Also, the messages they send will now be under the Group name tag.

Animated pop-ups and new emojis

The update also includes animated pop-ups. This feature is limited to Android and shows revamped animations when users delete messages, save media, change notification, etc. In addition to new animated emojis, the update brings features like long-press on profile picture to view closer, and do the same on account switcher to preview chat lists.

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Telegram is one of the popular cross-platform instant messaging apps in the market. Every now and then, the service adds new features to keep its users entertained. Hence, the latest version of the brings a host of new features like video editor, animated stickers in photos and videos, two-step verification, cache management, and more.

Telegram has been existing for 7 years but it has added two-step verification only now. As they say better late than never. If you really care about your account, you should definitely enable it after updating the app to the latest version.

The second interesting feature in the latest update is the new video editor which allows users to tweak a number of parameters like brightness and saturation to name a few. Also, animated stickers can be now inserted in images or videos while editing them. Thus, users can convert a boring image to a GIF.

Further, the new update also adds a brand new trending GIFs section to discover new ones easily. The company also claims to have improved loading times for GIFs in the panel.

If you use chat folders, then you are in for a treat as Telegram now allows you to add or remove chats in or out of any folder by simply long tapping on them.

Last but not least, Android users also get a new cache management tool which can be accessed from Settings > Data and Storage > Storage Usage.

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