Results of the second stage of the November Android developer competition announced

The task of the competition was to implement the function of reactions to messages in the mobile application in accordance with the proposed design.

The prize-winners shared $50,250 among themselves.

Detailed information about the winners, their awards and works can be viewed on the official Telegram channel of the contests (Russian channel).

By the end of the year, the messenger team plans to hold another competition for Android developers.

#contest

Telegram Is The Fastest Growing Mobile App in 2021 Globally

According to statistics published by Appannie, Telegram is fastest at growing monthly active users among other apps in 2021. Besides that, Telegram is 7th most downloaded mobile app.

Pavel Durov expressed his feelings about this in his channel, mentioning that the given data means Telegram is the fastest growing app in the world.

German Justice Minister calls for joint EU action to regulate Telegram

According to Marko Buschmann, the problem with the messenger is that it has no representation or official contact person in Germany, which makes it difficult to combat illegal content.

According to him, the owners of the messenger are interested in getting money from advertising, which means they cannot give up on the solvent European market.

Reactions to messages, spoilers and more in Telegram for iOS

In Telegram for iOS 8.4 Beta, the following features are available and expected in future update:

— Reaction on messages
Users can leave one of the 11 available reactions. You can also get quick reactions by double-clicking on a message.

— Formatting text to hide information
Spoilers allows you to hide the text under the noise animation. Clicking allows you to see the hidden information.

— Message Translator
Thanks to the new iOS 15 feature, you can translate any highlighted text.

— Updated QR Codes
Anyone can generate QR codes for public and private links of groups and channels.

— Snow in Telegram
To enable it, you need to make 7-10 clicks on the gear, and turn on the "Snow" item.

#iOS #Beta

Where Are Reactions

Some attentive users of Telegram Beta have found that in some groups and channels reactions to messages has disappeared.

It happened because of changes in the reactions system: they became disabled by default in groups and channels. In PMs, the logic of reactions remains the same, so you can react to any message as you did before.

It is unknown whether the logic of this function will undergo further adjustments.

Best and worst Telegram features in 2021

The 2021st year is approaching its end. It's the time to have a look at the features which were introduced this year.

Current year brought many features, but not all of them are favored by users. Some of them were not as successful as it was promised: for example, Telegram promised video chats to be actually unlimited, while in reality the stream becomes unstable at about 2000 users.

The Telegram team keeps adding new features to the app, for instance, the Beta-versions of the Telegram apps already have reactions and other improvements.

It's the time for a poll to choose worst and best features of the expiring year.

Telegram is unstable right now

European and Middle East users (DC2) are reporting Telegram being unstable, particularly, messages are getting delivered slowly.

UPD. 6PM UTC: Telegram servers are returning to stable state

#outages

Pavel Durov challenged the Signal founder's accusations in Telegram insecurity

Recently, Signal founder, Matthew Rosenfeld, stated on Twitter that Telegram is even less secure than WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, providing a lot of misconceptions as an argument.

Pavel Durov published a devastating post on his English-language Telegram channel to prove the safety of his messenger.

TGStat has started sending New Year's cards to Telegram channel owners

TGStat.com traditionally congratulates channel owners on the upcoming New Year with holiday cards on the final statistics of channels for 2021.

After the end of the mailing (in a couple of hours), anyone in the @TGStat_Bot bot will be able to receive the card. When the bot is ready for requests, we will notify you.

How to get a New Year's card from TGStat?

If you haven't received a newsletter from the bot:

Go to @TGStat_Bot and text:

— 2021 @username
and put in your channel username, e.g. 2021 @tginfo

— 2021 t.me/joinchat/AAAAAE1SE...
For private channels

You can share your postcards in the comments of this post.

Bot API was updated to version 5.6

— Improved support for Protected Content.
— Added the parameter protect_content to the methods sendMessage, sendPhoto, sendVideo, sendAnimation, sendAudio, sendDocument, sendSticker, sendVideoNote, sendVoice, sendLocation, sendVenue, sendContact, sendPoll, sendDice, sendInvoice, sendGame, sendMediaGroup, copyMessage, forwardMessage to allow sending messages with protected content to any chat.
— Added support for spoiler entities, which will work in Telegram versions released after December 30, 2021. Older clients will display unsupported message.
— Added new MessageEntity type “spoiler”.
— Added the ability to specify spoiler entities using HTML and MarkdownV2 formatting options.

See the full changelog for details on the official website.

#update #BotAPI

Reactions, spoilers, translation and QR codes

Telegram for Android, iOS, macOS and Unigram has been updated to version 8.4, Telegram Desktop — to version 3.4.

Reactions
• Double tap a message to send a quick 👍🏻 reaction.
• Press and hold a message for more reactions.
• Change your quick reaction emoji in Settings > Stickers and Emoji.
• Group and Channel admins can enable reactions in their chat via Chat Info > Edit > Reactions.

Spoilers
• Select text when typing and choose 'Spoiler' formatting to hide some or all of the contents of a message.
• Tap the spoiler animation in chat to reveal its hidden text.
• Spoiler formatting hides text in chat, as well as in the chat list and notifications.

Translation
• Turn on the Translation option in Settings > Languages.
• Press and hold a message to translate it into another language.

QR Codes
• Generate a custom QR Code that leads to your public t.me link.
• Tap the QR code icon in public profiles for groups, bots and channels to let someone quickly scan it with their device.

More about this update: https://telegram.org/blog/reactions-spoilers-translations

Android: Google Play, APK from official website or verified channel.
iOS: App Store.
Telegram Desktop: with official website or GitHub.
Telegram for macOS: from App Store or verified channel.
Unigram for Windows 10: Microsoft Store | Download | Installation help

#update #Android #iOS #Desktop #macOS #Unigram

Android Design Contest Results Announced

The task of the competition was to develop a complete and complete concept of voice and video calls - both between two users and in voice chats - for Telegram X on Android.

30 prize winners from all over the world shared $ 48,000.

Since none of the design concepts met the ideal submission criteria required for 1st place, no one was identified.

Detailed information about the winners, their awards and works can be view on the official Telegram channel of the contests.

All 30 winners of this competition were invited to take part in the second stage - to develop the main screens of the native Telegram application for Windows 11 (Unigram). More information - on the official channel of the Telegram contests.

#contest

Telegram Info is 6 years old!

The first post on the Russian channel was published 6 years ago. Over the past year, we have expanded our geography and now we write not only in Russian and English, but also in Spanish, Italian, French, German, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, and in general, in more than 30 languages. See full list.

All the channels in different languages of the world are possible thanks to our volunteers from around the globe. If you would like to help translating news into your language and want to join our community — write to @infowritebot.

We continue to fight censorship in different countries. Our proxy server helps you to access up-to-date information regardless of local government bans.

Since 2018, we have been running our own website, where we help to explore Telegram's features, we support the platform with known messenger limits (available in 23 languages thanks to volunteers).

We also run a Beta Info channel about beta versions of the apps for our most loyal fans, and we continue to lead many other projects.

In 2022, we will not stop here, because we have you — our readers, for whom the @tginfoen team works.

#anniversary

Default Telegram Channel Administrator Rights You Should Know About

Recently, Telegram bots dev wrote (in Russian) about the problem in his own blog. So, any channel administrator (bot or user with minimal rights) can block the entire audience of the channel.

«At least this post was written so that you know that you cannot add all bots in a row to the channel, but only those you trust and whose creators have a reputation. I would also like the administration of the messenger to add separate rights for the ability to ban channel members with bots, as is done in groups. If possible, inform your friends' channel administrators about this», — the blog says.

All channel administrators can see the last 200 subscribers, the entire list of admins and recent actions in the channel, so it can also be considered the default rights.

Telegram Info editors warn: be careful and never add unverified bots or users to the list of administrators of your chat or channel.

Malicious software pretends to be a Telegram Desktop Installer

Minerva Lab, an Israel cyber security company, reported a new variant of the Purple Fox rootkit virus. This malicious software family was originally detected in 2018. Most of infected devices are used to infect more devices, or in DDoS attacks. The newfound variant pretends to be a Telegram Desktop installer that installs the mentioned rootkit in background.

The virus didn't affect the official Telegram downloads, it only spreads on unofficial websites. This incident serves as a reminder to download software only from official websites.

The only official downloads for Telegram Desktop are on the desktop.telegram.org website, Microsoft Store, Mac App Store and GitHub.

Telegram for Android builds don't match the source code

A developer of Nekogram, an unofficial Telegram app modification, complains Reproducible Builds are broken for the Android app. According to the developer, the issue persists for multiple versions in a row.

Telegram Info made a build by following the guide and confirms the statement: the produced APK files don't match official builds from Google Play and the official website.

Reproducible Builds allow you to stay sure the source code actually matches the distributed app from Google Play and the official website. If the builds match, it means the Telegram team has provided full source code and didn't add hidden functionality.

It's likely that Reproducible Builds were broken accidentally and will be fixed in future.

Telegram works on message translation through its own servers

The new API schema data on the Telegram website indicates that in future versions of the messenger, translations will be made through the Telegram servers. In the current version of the application, translation on iOS is done via Apple Translator, and on Android — by direct requests to Google Translate. The language of the message is detected on-device.

According to Durov's Code, Google Translate in Telegram for Android is used in a quirky way, with a workaround to not pay the service fee, as a temporary measure, while the messenger team is working on translation through their servers.

What technology will be used is still unknown. Language detection will most likely continue to be on-device.