Group calls in Telegram Desktop

Beta-version of Telegram Desktop under number 2.4.12 received support for group calls (voice chats in groups).

You can test voice chat in @tginfochaten, and in @tginfofm you can hear our radio station.

#Beta #desktop

Previews for Instagram posts

Over the past few months Instagram post previews have been unstable or not working at all.

This is caused because of some weirdness of Instagram, which is owned by Facebook: under undefined circumstances, Instagram does not return the required data (OpenGraph tags). This data is used by third-party services to generate previews.

At the same time, in WhatsApp (also owned by Facebook), this function continued to work, apparently due to the special access mode provided by Facebook.

Got to mention, in 2016 Instagram tried to block Telegram and Snapchat links, but after user complains the developers rolled the change back.

Link example: instagram.com/p/CIjAPGRl8Bn

🔊 More animated emojis with sound

Ahead of the new year, the messenger team has added soundtracks to some animated emojis.

The sound is played by clicking on the animated emoji (it must be sent without text).

Full list of emojis with sound: 🎃, ⚰️, 🧟, 🧟‍♂️, 🧟‍♀️, 🍑, ❤️, 🎉, 🎄, 🎊, 🦾.

Archived Chats feature landed on Telegram a year ago

And only in 2020, folders appeared in the official clients – another way to organize the list of dialogs, and bring it into a readable form.

Last year results: t.me/tginfoen/579

To understand whether the number of users using the archive has changed, we are conducting a poll.

Help us spreading it and get more reliable data.

EU added Telegram and VKontakte to "piracy tracking list"
⁠⁠⁠
The European Commission has published a list of resources that promote and can benefit from piracy. It includes resources located outside the EU. For the first time, Telegram appears in the report.

This year, a new category has been added to the report - social networks. While the list is limited to Telegram and VK.com. Both companies objected to their listing. Telegram has informed the European Commission that it will promptly remove content that violates laws within 24 hours. VKontakte also detailed its anti-piracy policy.

tginfo.me/tg-piracy-en

Telegram private links did not work for more than 20 minutes

There were problems in Telegram, due to which it was impossible to join channels and groups using private links like: "t.me/joinchat/*****".

There is speculation that the team tested temporary invite links.

The problem has been resolved for now.

#crashes

The year 2020 is coming to an end. Let's think about the updates that were released this year.

Telegram had a lot of significant changes in 2020. However, not all of them were well received by community.

Select features you think were worst.

Telegram advertising platform, paid business functions and monetization already in 2021

Pavel Durov on his channel write about plans for the development of the messenger.

The main thing from his post:
- Telegram is not for sale (like others).
- It will exist for a long time.
- Additional features for business teams and users with advanced needs.
- Monetization will start in 2021.
- All current services will remain free.
- All services related to communication will remain without ads.
- An advertising exchange for Telegram channels will appear.
- Monetization will benefit not only the messenger, but also users in the form of additional traffic for channel owners from the platform, and for artists from stickers.

Voice chats in groups, new animations and a lot more
⁠
Telegram for Android and iOS got updated to version 7.3

Group voice chats
— Start voice chats in any groups.
— Thousands of participants in a single voice chat
— Control active users with flexible administrative tools.

Editing enhancements
— Edit photos by tapping paintbrush icon in photo viewer.
— Character limit counter when editing media captions.

New animated emojis
— Animated emojis: 🥴, 🤗, 🥺, ⭐️ , ⚡️, ☠️, 🔍, 🔎, ✨, 🤫, 💤, 🤥, 🤑, 💪, 🤩, 🤭 and 🤠.
— Animated emojis with sound: 🎄, 🦾, 🎉 and 🎊.

New for Android
— New animations for "New message" button, while opening user profiles and managing chat folders.
— Counter animations for unread messages in chats, folders and attachments.
— People Nearby is now in the main menu.
— Editing messages with no Internet.

Learn more in official blog: telegram.org/blog/voice-chats/

Android: Google Play APK site or official channel.
iOS: App Store.

#update #Android #iOS

Telegram Desktop updated to stable version 2.5.1

What's new:
- Voice chats in groups.
- Hot key Ctrl + M in the voice chat window to minimize it.
- Hot key Ctrl + W in the voice chat window to disconnect from it.
- Ability to freely record a voice message. To do this, you need to hold down and pull up, and the recording will continue without the need to hold LMB.
- Added read status icons for some service messages.
- Support for creating polls in the comments section.
- Support for inline bots and suggestions for emoji stickers in the comments of the channel.
- Canceling a chat search no longer resets the current search query.
- Fixed editing of the last message using the "Up" key during forwarding.
- Enter key is now disabled when confirming clearing history to prevent accidental clearing.
- Ability to invite people from your contact list to voice chats.

You can test our radio station at @tginfofm.

Read more in the article: telegram.org/blog/voice-chats

Download: from official website or GitHub.

#update #desktop #stable

It snowed on Telegram

Christmas decorations are back on Telegram for Android. The icons in the side menu have changed to New Year's, and it's snowing in his header.

#Android

Best Update 2020
⁠
The current year brought many important features to the messenger, it's time to take a poll and choose the best innovation of the outgoing year.

The poll for the worst innovation of 2020 can be found here.

How to create a channel

In the updated version of Telegram for Android, the "New Channel" button has disappeared from the side menu.

Now, to create a channel, the user needs to click on the "New message" button in the lower right corner and click on the "Create channel" button, as shown in the video.

#Android

Telegram announced upcoming contests for developers and content creators for 2021

- Contest for iOS developers to create animations for the messenger interface.
- Contest for Android developers to create messenger interfaces.
- Competition for C / C ++ developers to cluster content and determine channel topics.
- Contest for developers to process audio and video tracks in calls.

- Competition for creators of universal IQ tests in English.
- Contest for vector animation designers to create animated stickers.
- Competition to create thematic GIF-animations.

In the outgoing 2020, Telegram paid out more than $ 850,000 to the winners of competitions from the CIS, in the coming year the total prize fund will reach $ 1,000,000.

Details will be posted on the @contest channel. @ContestBot is already accepting applications for participation.

The year 2020 is coming to an end, which means that it's time to take stock
⁠
This year has brought many expected features: folders, video calls, group audio calls, and many more.
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
A week ago, we launched a survey on the worst and best innovations in Telegram this year. Let's summarize and tell you more about the innovations that delighted users this year: tginfo.me/2020-features-en

Telegram has another failure

Telegram problems began at 14:45 Moscow time. Starting at 15:30, the messenger started to recover.

Most of the reported crashes came from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Belarus, Ukraine, Estonia and Uzbekistan.

downdetector.com/status/telegram/

#crashes

How a group differs from a supergroup

Many users have probably forgotten that there are two types of group chats:
- Groups.
- Supergroups.

At the moment, the transformation of a group into a supergroup is seamless, and for conversion it is enough to do one of the actions described here.

Our @tginfochat was transformed into a supergroup exactly 5 years ago. Since then, more than a million messages have been written in the chat. During this time, the differences between ordinary groups and supergroups have become less, but there are still many of them.

Supergroup benefits:
- Blacklist and bans.
- Ability to give admins a custom role.
- Notifications are off by default.
- Ability to create a public link to the group.
- Number of participants up to 200,000 (the group will automatically become a supergroup when it reaches 200 participants).
- Ability to setup the visibility of history for new participants in the conversation.
- Ability to configure global rights in the group (for example, prohibiting stickers).
- Creator and administrators can delete all posts for all members of the group, other users can only delete their posts, but also for all users.

The advantages of a regular group:
- Groups are not included in the limit of 500 channels and supergroups.
- All users can edit the description, name and avatar of the group.
- Any user can delete other people's messages (only for himself).

#supergroup