Sneak Peek at Telegram Web Bots
⁠⁠⁠
Telegram started to test web bots, which are similar to inline bots, but still have some key differences:

— Pressing a bot button will open a third-party website inside Telegram.
— The website receives some key colors of your theme so it can adapt to look like a part of the app.
— The web bot can be pinned to the Attachments menu. When you select it from there, Telegram passes your current chat info to the website.
— Avatars are passed into the website as hotlinks, so they can be easily injected.
— Website can pass up to 4096 bytes of data to the bot, which is a record: inline buttons can carry up to 64 bytes of payload.
— Web bots can send messages of any attachment type available to inline bots on behalf of the user with a "via @bot" sign.
— Developers will have to develop the communication API between the bot and the website on their own.

#webbots

Save replies for forwarded messages

In the upcoming Telegram update, when sending several messages at the same time, internal replays will be saved. This means that in the forwarded messages you will be able to see the entire message chain, just like in the original correspondence.

Note that replays in messages sent via the Beta version of the macOS client can already be seen on all current clients.

#macOS

‍Explaining the Web bots

After our Web Bots Sneak Peek, readers got many questions left.

In the new material, we explain exactly how Web bots work, how they differ from the gaming platform, what is controversial about them and what kind of bots can you expect in the future.

Read: tginfo.me/explaining-web-bots-en

An example of a Web bot for food delivery

In the code of the public beta version of Telegram for Android, the name of the test Web bot was mentioned. This is a fictional food delivery service "Durger King".

In the native @DurgerKingBot interface, you can place an order with a few clicks, accompany it with a comment, and pay for the purchase using the payment information saved in Telegram or via Google Pay.

This is just a demo. The possible applications for Web bots are countless, and some of them we already wrote about in an article on the topic.

tginfo.me/explaining-web-bots-en

Telegram grows in China despite lockdown

Telegram's popularity in China began to grow in February 2020, when Chinese authorities tightened censorship of Covid-19 conversations on popular domestic platforms such as WeChat and Weibo. In search of alternative sources of information, some people turned to Telegram and others to Signal. Telegram installations in China grew 64% that month to 110,000 according to the Sensor Tower at the South China Morning Post, while Signal installations grew 70% to 17,000.

Telegram downloads also spiked last summer as former US President Donald Trump tried to ban WeChat in the US, prompting users to look for other ways to stay with friends and family in China. WeChat is normally the go-to tool for communicating with people in China, it is apparently used by everyone, and as a Chinese app, it works reliably within the country, but it must comply with local laws such as those that allow authorities to access the data of users who make some turn up their noses.

Reports our Chinese channel @tginfocn.

Read all the news about Telegram in Chinese at @tginfocn.

#statistics

Notification Sounds, Bot Revolution and More
⁠⁠
Telegram for Android, iOS, macOS and Unigram have been updated to version 8.7, Telegram Desktop — to version 3.7.

Bot Revolution
• Developers are given the tools to create infinitely flexible interfaces with JavaScript.
• Next-generation Telegram bots can completely replace any website.
• These interfaces can be programmed to match a user’s theme – adjusting color schemes in real time, for example when switching between Day and Night modes or setting custom themes.
• You can try out the new generation of bots in the @DurgerKingBot.

Custom Notification Sounds
• You can now turn any sound into a notification tone.
• Telegram tones are cross-platform and completely free.
• You can set a notification sound for an individual chat or for all chats of the desired type (personal chats, channels, groups).
• Tap a short audio file or voice message in chat to instantly add it to your list of notification sounds, which you can assign to any chats.
• Tones currently support audio files and voice messages under 5 seconds up to 300 KB in size.
• Try some samples made by Telegram team (and their pets) in the Notification Sounds channel.
• You can access your sounds on all your devices via Settings > Notifications and Sounds.

Custom Mute Durations
• Now you can also pause notifications for a specific duration.
• In streamlined menu for modifying alerts choose Disable Sound to receive notifications silently, or one of the Mute options to turn off notifications completely.
• On Android, tap 'Notifications' on a chat's info page or ⋮ > Mute in the chat header. On iOS, tap 'Mute' on a chat's info page.

New Auto-Delete Menu in Profiles
• Now Auto-Delete takes fewer taps to enable.
• It supports flexible timer settings — like 2 days, 3 weeks, 4 months, and more.
• Enable Auto-Delete from ⋮ on a chat's info page.

Instantly Configure Bot Admins
• Users can now quickly add bots to their group or channel right from the bot's profile.
• You can also instantly configure rights and permissions for the bot.
• Bots can only be added to channels as admins, while bots can be added to groups as both members or admins.

Improved Picture-in-Picture (Android)
• Resize the window by stretching or squeezing it with two fingers.
• Tap X to quickly close it
• Enjoy the new rounded design.

And More
• Replies in forwarded messages.
• Improved message translation (iOS).
• Clearing message history of group for all participants.
• New animations in phone number changing interface.
• More animated emoji.

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

Most ideas for Web bots won't come true in the near future

Earlier, Telegram Info team made an article exploring the possibilities of the new Web bot platform. Alas, we won't be able to see most of the proposed integrations in the foreseeable future.

The ability to open Web interfaces within Telegram is available to everyone and essentially duplicates the features of the Telegram game platform, which was launched in 2016.

The official Web bots documentation states that "Attachment menu integration is currently only available for major advertisers on the Telegram Ad Platform." This means that the new feature will only be available to literally a few developers, mentioning the fact that in order to participate in the Ad Platform you need to have at least €2,000,000 at your disposal.

Thus, the Attachment menu integration is an option only for large companies participating in the Ad Platform or for developers that are close to Telegram, and it works only in private chats.

The food ordering bot @DurgerKingBot was developed by the Telegram team to demonstrate the new feature. Ironically, in reality this bot wouldn't have been able to get this feature, since fast food ads are banned by Telegram's Ad Platform rules.

The platform is already seeing some problems: the bot's web pop-up blocks interaction with the app's main window, which makes it useless for, for example, a video calls bot: you can't use Telegram and communicate with the person you're talking to via call at the same time. Also, the Telegram team did not offer a standardized library for creating interfaces, so different bots may look different and not fit in the application's overall design.

Telegram Info team believes that the feature was originally intended as an exclusive opportunity to integrate TON Coin with Telegram, although there is no direct evidence of that. The opinion, in particular, is based on the fact that TON actively uses Telegram's advertising platform. TON developers have already implemented similar functionality themselves as a browser extension for the Web versions of Telegram.

In its documentation, the Telegram team does not hint at the possibility of extending access to the feature in the future. It is likely that the ability to integrate into the Attachment menu will remain exclusive to "closely related" bots, and we will not see integrations like "pick files from Google Drive and send them in Telegram".

Telegram Desktop has been updated to version 3.7.1

What's new:
— Hardware accelerated video decoding is turned off by default: this should help to fix the bug when videos were playing back in green color. If you want, you can turn the feature back on under Advanced settings › Performance, if it doesn't cause problems.
— Fix several crashes.

Download: with official website or GitHub.

#update #desktop

Telegram for Android got a 8.7.1 version update

— The list of users who read the message can now work in groups with exactly 100 users. Because of a bug, it was working only in groups up to 99 users before.
— Audio in audio/mpeg3 format can now be set as notification sound.
— Web Bots can now use local storage.
— Simplified "Mute for..." popup.
— Small fixes and improvements.

Updated: Fixed some wrongly interpreted changes. The limit of the participants who read the message wasn't actually raised in this release. Instead, a bug was fixed.

Download: Google Play, APK from official website or verified channel.

#Android

Telegram Premium Account

According to the information Telegram Info has, the upcoming updates for the Telegram app will introduce paid Premium Accounts with exclusive features.

Previously, Pavel Durov told the team is considering stickers with extended functionality in the future. Perhaps, such stickers will be the first content in Telegram distributed on paid basis.

Which features will be available and how the Premium Accounts program will work is unknown at this moment.

#monetization

Telegram news feed

The official Telegram for iOS repository has seen a commit to confirm the appearance of a news feed in Telegram.

It appears that in upcoming updates, users will be able to view posts from channels in a unified feed.

Integration of the TON wallet into the Telegram client

Thanks to WebApp bots, the @wallet service has implemented the integration of the wallet into the attachments of Telegram clients.

Now you can transfer Toncoin cryptocurrency to users directly from the messenger. Without long wallet addresses, commissions and waiting for transaction confirmation.

We already wrote earlier that probably the entire Web bot platform was created specifically for the integration of TON Coin with Telegram.

Integrate wallet: t.me/wallet?attach=wallet

Telegram in the top five most downloaded applications in the world

Pavel Durov said that Telegram in 2022, as in 2021, is again among the top five most downloaded applications in the world. Of these five most popular apps, Telegram is the only one that doesn't spend billions on marketing.

#statistics

First features of Telegram Premium

Some features of Telegram Premium subscription are known. Among them there are more reactions, as well as stickers with full-screen animation.

Paid features can only be seen on the test server via Beta version of the iOS client. It’s currently impossible to access to the subscription.

Increased character limit for multimedia files description

Telegram has increased the limit for the description of multimedia files from 1024 to 4096 characters on server side.

You can find out more Telegram limits here: limits.tginfo.me

#limits

UPD. The limit was rolled back to the previous value

More about Telegram Premium

There is more information about the preparation of Premium accounts in messenger. The benefits that users with a paid subscription will receive have become known.

Key Features of Telegram Premium:
• Special badge near the name.
• Full screen stickers.
• Additional reactions.

Double the limit for the following items:
• Number of chats in the folder (100 → 200).
• Limit on channels and supergroups (500 → 1000).
• Number of folders (10 → 20).
• Number of pinned dialogs in the main feed (5 → 10) and inside the folder (100 → 200).
• Number of public usernames for channels and supergroups (10 → 20).
• Number of favorite stickers (5 → 10).

Most likely, the lists will be replenished further, as Telegram is actively testing innovations and experimenting with limits.

#premium

Telegram added new payment providers for Payments 2.0

Smart Glocal and Bank 131 are now integrated into Payments 2.0 platform, that was created to provide fast payments for bot developers.

Payments 2.0 was introduced in April of last year. One of the bots that supports the new payment method is the verified @donate bot, which was created to accept donations to channel authors.

New Features of Web-Bots

Web-bots will be able to send payment invoices as link. They can be opened on browser, forwarded to friends, or posted to a channel. Probably, not only web-bots, but simple ones will have opportunity to create such links.

Previously, invoices were issued only using a special bot (for example, the "Donate" button under the message).

‌Web-bots will be able to open an invoice and track its status (paid, canceled, completed with an error) and provide information about it.

A clickable link like https://t.me/invoice/tginfo will allow you to make payments in a few clicks.

Links like tg://invoice?slug=tginfo will be available directly inside Telegram

Such links will start working in the next updates of the messenger, but for now they redirect the user to an unknown @invoice channel.

Telegram Discreetly Changes Terms of Use in Brazil

After what happened on March 18, 2022, Telegram changed its Terms of Use, following the determinations of Minister Alexandre de Moraes. According to a user in our group, when accessing the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use pages on the Telegram website in Brazil, it is possible to notice that there is now a fourth term in which it says that it is prohibited to participate in illegal activities with terrorism and child abuse.

In addition, Telegram can now pass on your IP data if "Telegram receives a court order from a democratic country such as Brazil regarding the use of Telegram's public platform for activities prohibited by the Terms of Use"

A bot for GDPR information was also created, @lgpdbot, different from @gdprbot for the European Union.

Reported by our Brazilian channel.

Read all the news about Telegram in Brazil at @tginfobr.

#Brazil

Hong Kong is considering blocking Telegram

On Tuesday, the local newspaper Sing Tao Daily reported, which is the Commissioner for Personal Privacy Data is considering restricting access to Telegram for distributing personal data of government officials and citizens.

The authorities have so far avoided Internet restrictions similar to China, where many foreign services are banned by the great Chinese firewall.

A Telegram representative commented to Bloomberg about the situation:
Telegram supports freedom of speech and the right of users to protest peacefully. However, content that discloses personal information without consent (doxxing) is not allowed and is regularly removed.

In 2020, Telegram spokesman Mikhail Ravdovnikas reported that Telegram did not intend to process any data requests relating to its users in Hong Kong until there was an international consensus on current political changes in the city.

In September, Hong Kong tightened data privacy laws to prevent doxxing. Blocking Telegram could be a logical step in the fight against doxing after 2019 protesters released details about police officers and other government employees.

Officials will consider public opinion before making a decision.

Read news about Telegram in Chinese at @tginfocn

#hongkong #lock