Animated Emoji, Silent Messages and More in Telegram’s Latest Update

Written by Cheryl Tan

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1. Animated thumbs up, red heart, side eye, flushed face and partying face emojis

2. Silent Messages with no sound notifications

3. Enforced delay for messages in group chats

4. Timestamps and better scrubbing for videos

If you still don’t know what Telegram is, you really do have to get with the times. A messaging app that’s cloud- based with sync across multiple devices and better encryption, this is the way to go for people who want their privacy and convenience. Also, if you’re a fan of stickers like me, you’ll definitely want to check it out.

There has been a recent update that introduces quite a lot of new features, so let’s take a look at some of them.

Animated Emoji

This is something that Whatsapp has had for a while with the heart emoji, but Telegram takes it a step further with ” Large Emojis”. It’s able to animate not only the heart emoji, but also the thumbs up, side eye, flushed face and partying face emojis.

If you’re not a fan however, head on over to Chat Settings and toggle off “Large Emoji”.

Silent Messages

Credit: Telegram

Sometimes I text my friends in the middle of the night when I wake up, just to share a funny dream or because I’m pondering life. More often than not, it usually results in angry friends who threaten to block me so they don’t get their sleep disrupted. Now, I can spam my friends to my heart’s content with the Silent Messages feature.

To send silent messages, hold the send button and a popup will appear for you to send messages without a sound notification. I don’t think this works with vibrations though, so if your friends are light sleepers, they’re out of luck. But this works well for messaging your colleagues during a meeting though!

Slow Mode

Credit: Telegram

If you’re a group admin for a large group chat on Telegram, you’ll have the same issues with people spamming. Imagine if you announce something exciting and some members in the chat just go wild? Definitely annoying for the others.

Admins will now be able to activate Slow Mode in group chats, where you can force a delay on the interval members must have between each message. This can be activated via Group Permissions. It ranges from 30 seconds to 1 hour, so even if there’s 500 members in your group chat, you’ll definitely be able to control the rate at which messages come in.

Video Timestamps and Scrubbing

Gone are the days where you have to slowly scrub through a video to figure out exactly what your friend is trying to let you see. Telegram now allows users to mark timestamps like YouTube does, by adding a time like “0:30” to a comment and letting users click on it to play the video from that spot.

There’s also a thumbnail preview for scrubbing through a video so you can find the exact moment you want, instead of having to guess!

There are also other features added in this update, to see the whole list, go to Telegram’s website.