Voice messages on Telegram just got a completely new interface with waveform visualizations, a brand new player and raise-to-speak functionality.

You can now start listening to a long voice message and switch to other media or chats. The message will continue playing in the background. For who are we to defy the god of multi-tasking?

New looks for voice messages

Recording and listening to voice messages got easier with raise-to-speak and raise-to-listen. When a chat is open, bring your phone to your ear (as if taking a phone call) to listen to new voice messages or record a new one after the signal.

Raise to Speak: Preview before sending

This feature involves plenty of behind-the-scene magic with proximity sensors, gyroscopes and accelerometers. It works well with most modern devices, but is still experimental. Some phones may require arcane intervention from our devs.

Secret Chats 3.0

With their self-destruct timers and end-to-end encryption, secret chats are a great way to pass sensitive information. Today we’re bringing the best features from cloud chats over to secret chats: detailed link previews, replies, photo and video captions, sticker sharing, inline bots and GIFs. We’ve also improved key visualizations to make secret chats immune to potential alien invasions.

A Secret Chat full of new goodies

Privacy. When overly active friends start adding you to random groups or channels, it gets overwhelming quickly. Now you can decide who may add you to groups and channels with granular precision. E.g. “All my contacts. Except those two.”

Supergroups. Supergroup creators also get more control. They can now change who may add new members to their group: all existing members or only selected admins. Supergroups can have up to 1000 members, and finding a balance between order and chaos is important if you want them to grow.

Sharing extension. Sharing on iOS devices has become way smoother. You can now share any photo, video, audio, document or location to any Telegram chat or channel straight from default iOS apps like Contacts, Maps, Voice Memos and Photos. It is also possible to share stuff to several chats or channels at once.

Attachment Menu. Media files will zoom beautifully when you select them in the attachment menu. Note that we’ve moved ‘Image Search’ to the ’Photo or Video’ section (tap the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner).

Hotkeys. iPad users with external keyboards get hotkey support. Now you can navigate chats and send messages without ever touching your iPad’s screen. Saves a lot of time.

Photo Editor. In the Android corner, we’re introducing additional photo-editing tools – rotate, fade, tint and curves.

Photo editor Curves tool

We’re not done with updates this month – more features and good news are coming very soon to a Telegram Messenger near you.





February 12, 2016

The Telegram Team