Telegram has announced its latest feature drop for the month, and this time, it has added 15 new features. The instant messaging app recently crossed over 900 million monthly active users, half of which open Telegram daily, according to its CEO Pavel Durove.
Making additions to the Settings Page, the My Profile section lets you view your Telegram profile as other users see it and you can quickly make changes to it. If you have saved your birth date, people who visit your profile on your birthday will be greeted with animated confetti and balloons.
On the other hand, Telegram will remind you about other people’s birthdays by displaying a banner in the chat list. Note that, your birthday is only visible to your contacts by default, but you can change that in your privacy settings.
There is a new Channels tab in the search interface where the app will show recommended channels with similar topics. If you’re an admin, you can showcase your channel on your profile page above your bio with a detailed preview of the latest post.
Channel admins can manage reactions by choosing the maximum number of reaction types a post can have. Telegram now allows you to link your collectible username to your account or channel. The username gets features on your profile page with additional details such as its cost and when it was acquired.
When sharing live locations with friends or group chats, you can now add more time to an existing shared location and even extend it to an indefinite amount of time. You can now get notifications about reactions to Telegram Stories and a new toggle button lets you control who can react to your stories. Telegram’s Instant View for websites is now available on its desktop app so you can open a web page and “all its media directly in your app with zero load times,” it said.
For premium users, Telegram has added a toggle button to unhide ads in the app. According to the company, the feature can be useful for businesses and users who want to check how their own ads appear in the app.
Furthermore, Premium users can include animated and custom emojis in polls. They can watch Stories anonymously without getting noticed. The feature lets them “hide their recent views and continue hiding views for the next 25 minutes.” To activate it, press and hold a Story in your feed and select ‘View Anonymous’ from the list.
You can check out Telegram’s official blog post to read about the features in detail.