2025-01-25 07:38:24
Today's update adds 6 new features to Telegram, including the ability to wear collectible gifts as an emoji status, move gifts to the blockchain, send gifts to channels — and more.
Gifts that you upgrade to collectibles can now be used as a unique emoji status.
Using a gift as your status gives it a glittering star effect and changes the appearance of your profile to match the backdrop and symbol from your collectible.
To wear one of your gifts, go to My Profile > Gifts, tap a gift and select 'Wear'. If you take off the gift later, your profile will return to its original appearance.
Like collectible usernames and numbers, gifts can now be transferred or auctioned via the TON blockchain. This gives owners permanent control — even if they lose access to or delete their Telegram account.
Moving a gift to a TON wallet also allows you to connect to outside services, such as auction sites or platforms that offer extra perks for collectibles.
To move gifts to the blockchain, go to Settings > My Profile > My Gifts and tap one of your gifts, then select Transfer > Send via Blockchain.
To celebrate holidays and achievements, Telegram users can now congratulate channels by sending gifts that are displayed on the channel's profile.
Just like when sending gifts to friends, subscribers can use Stars to upgrade the gift before sending — letting the recipient convert it into a unique collectible for free.
To send a gift to a channel, tap the
gift icon in the bottom corner of the channel.
Channel owners can transfer their gifts to other users and channels or auction them on the blockchain. Content creators and charities can use this functionality to raise funds for special projects and important causes.
Note: Gifts to channels will be rolling out gradually and may not be available everywhere immediately. But everyone can already check out how this feature works in this channel
Collectible gifts on your profile can be posted to your story — generating an elegant animated preview to show off your rare artwork and lucky numbers.
To post a gift to your story, go to Settings > My Profile > My Gifts, tap one of your gifts and select Share > Post to Story.
Every collectible gift has a unique link in the format of t.me/nft which you can share with friends or post to a channel.
The 'Gifts' tab on the profiles of channels includes filters to sort gifts by their value and collectible status, the date they were received, and whether they are from a limited or unlimited collection.
Admins can enable notifications from the Gifts tab of their channels to keep track of the gifts that are sent to the channel.
That's all for Telegram's second update of January. We'll be back soon — after trying on all our best gifts.
January 24, 2025
The Telegram Team
2025-01-02 04:15:54
Today we're releasing the first update of 2025, which includes collectible gifts that can be transferred or re-sent to other users, the ability to send reactions to in-chat events, filters for message search, an in-app QR code scanner and so much more.
Gifts you receive on Telegram are now able to be upgraded to collectibles. Collectible gifts have special attributes and can be transferred to other users or auctioned on NFT marketplaces.
When you upgrade a gift it unlocks a new appearance from dozens of custom variations made by Telegram artists. Collectibles also receive a random set of secondary traits, including a background color, icon and number. This means every collectible gift is a unique work of art — and that some will be more rare than others.
When buying a gift for another user, you can send it already upgraded — and watch as they unwrap their collectible artwork right in the chat.
If you're looking to obtain specific appearances or quickly build up your collection, collectible gifts can be instantly traded to other users.
When someone sends you a gift, joins a group or starts a video chat, a special service message appears in the conversation. These messages now support reactions — so you can say thanks or welcome new members in just two taps.
Service messages also appear when someone calls you, changes the profile photo of a chat, applies a new chat background, starts a giveaway and more.
The search bar in your chat list lets you quickly find messages from any of your chats. Results in the 'Chats' tab now have extra filters that let you refine the list to show results only from private chats, group chats or channels.
Tap the other tabs in the Search interface to look through recent downloads and shared media — or to discover popular channels and mini apps.
Telegram allows public figures and organizations to become verified, so users can quickly identify official sources of information. To further improve transparency on Telegram, official third-party services are now able to assign extra verification icons to user accounts and chats.
This decentralized platform for additional verification will help prevent scams and reduce misinformation — with a unique proactive solution that sets a new safety standard for social platforms.
When a chat or account receives third-party verification, a small logo appears before their name. If you open their profile, you'll see a detailed explanation of their status and what it means.
Third-party verification is completely separate from the verified checkmarks that Telegram provides for public figures and organizations. In order to provide third-party verification to others, a service must first be verified by Telegram and complete an application.
More details on third-party verification are available in this guide.
Anyone can create customizable chat folders to help organize their conversations. Folders names now support custom emoji, which lets Premium users make their folders extra expressive — or more minimalist by replacing text with specific icons.
Over 12 million Telegram users subscribe to Telegram Premium, which offers 30 exclusive features — like faster download speeds, instant chat translation, unlimited custom emoji and more.
The in-app camera on Android and iOS now recognizes QR codes by default, opening links in your preferred browser without switching apps.
To quickly open the in-app camera, swipe right on the main screen (on Android, tap on the camera icon in the bottom right corner).
In 2021, Telegram first began implementing sustainable monetization features in order to stay independent and support its continued growth for years to come.
In 2024, thanks to Premium subscriptions, privacy-conscious ads, Telegram Stars and more, Telegram reached profibability. Thanks to you, our users, we were able to achieve this goal — which will allow us to keep prioritizing users and protecting privacy.
That's all for today's update — which was meant to be the 17th major update of 2024, but was sadly delayed by a lack of attention from Apple's review team. We wish you a Happy New Year, and we'll be back soon to make 2025 even more memorable.
January 1, 2025
The Telegram Team
2024-12-04 17:28:07
Today, we’re bringing exciting news for content creators and mini app developers on Telegram. Creators now have a simple way to monetize their efforts (and earn Stars!), while mini app developers gain a powerful tool to attract new users. In addition, Telegram users can now find stickers with AI and create collages with photos and videos in their stories.
With this update, Telegram introduces Affiliate Programs for mini apps. These campaigns offer the first completely transparent promotions in the history of social media for both influencers and their audiences — with clear publicly available terms that anyone can verify.
All Telegram users and channels can now earn Stars by joining Affiliate Programs launched by developers. Simply head to your Star Balance and explore the list of available programs. Choose one, grab your unique referral link, and start sharing it.
You can sort programs in the list by their commission rate or their duration.
When someone uses your referral link to access a mini app and makes purchases there with Telegram Stars, you’ll earn a commission — a percentage of the Stars from their transactions.
Purchases from your referrals will grant you commissions for the entire duration of the Affiliate Program stated in its terms — even if the program is discontinued early.
Commissions will appear in your balance in real time once a user you referred to a mini app makes a transaction there. The affiliate platform is a simple and reliable way to earn Telegram Stars — which you can use to purchase products or subscriptions in apps, send gifts to friends, unlock media in channels and more.
More details on Affiliate Programs can be found in this guide.
Any mini app or bot developer on Telegram can start their own Affiliate Program, and specify what percent of their future revenue they are willing to share with those who refer users. They can even decide how long they want to share revenue after a user starts interacting with their mini app.
Setting up an Affiliate Program is seamless — just a few taps, and you’re ready to organically grow your user base more affordably and efficiently than traditional marketing campaigns.
Finding the perfect sticker just got easier! Thanks to a custom AI model, the sticker panel now supports complex searches with multiple keywords. For example, try typing cat drinking coffee and see results instantly appear from the over 40,000 stickers in Telegram's official packs.
Even better, this feature works in dozens of languages, making it easier than ever to express yourself. Premium users can also use this improved search in the emoji section.
You can also get instant suggestions for stickers and emoji right from the message bar and use emoji shortcuts like
:heartto quickly input emoji with text.
Telegram Stories just got a creative boost with collages. You can now combine up to 6 photos or videos in various layouts. Add media directly from your gallery or camera, and fill each tile to craft the perfect composition.
Want to tweak your collage? Change layouts easily using the options at the top of the screen, drag tiles to rearrange them or tap a tile to delete it, retake a photo, or adjust the volume of a video.
Captions for media in chats can now be effortlessly moved to the top by tapping the new 'Move Caption Up' button in the media editor.
Yes, this was already possible via the attachment menu, but now it's even more user-friendly!
That's all for today's update, we'll be back soon with a collage of new features.
December 4, 2024,
The Telegram Team
2024-11-17 19:41:02
Today we launch the largest update in the history of mini apps. They get a full-screen mode, subscription plans, home screen shortcuts, sending gifts, sharing media, creating documents, access to geolocation, motion tracker, setting emoji statuses — and more.
Mini apps are now able to use the entire screen in portrait or landscape orientation — allowing apps to host more game genres with expanded gestures and interfaces.
Mini apps are able to receive information about the motion of your device to add unique controls to games or build immersive VR experiences.
Developers can lock the screen orientation to ensure there is no unnecessary rotation if their app uses device motion for controls.
You can now place direct shortcuts to specific mini apps on the home screen of your device — accessing your favorite games and services in one tap.
You can now share your location with mini apps — which gives developers the ability to make location-based games with points of interest or interactive maps for events.
Access to location data is disabled by default — you must specifically give location permissions to each individual mini app with which you'd like to share this data.
Apps can now use their stars to send you gifts as rewards to celebrate achievements.
We've also added a new privacy setting that lets you control who can send you gifts that will appear on your profile.
With this update, Telegram Premium users can set emoji statuses from inside mini apps, showing others that they're in a game 
or a taxi 
.
Mini apps can integrate APIs from other services — instantly updating a user's emoji status when they start playing music 
, open a book 
or turn on a movie 
.
Apps with location permissions could also be used to update your status when you're at work 
or out of the office 
.
Developers can also create their own custom emoji packs to offer as status options, adding to the viral potential of mini apps.
You can now share media directly from mini apps — sending referral codes, custom memes and more to any chat.
Mini apps can also create media for you to post to your stories.
Mini apps can also generate documents and files which you can download — such as AI-generated profile pictures or audio files.
Developers are able to offer subscriptions to their mini app using Telegram Stars — monetizing their efforts with multiple tiers of content and features.
Telegram Stars earned from digital products and subscriptions can be used to increase message limits for the app or claim rewards.
Developers are also eligible to earn rewards from Telegram Ads in bots and mini apps.
Developers can further customize the loading screen of their mini app in @BotFather — adding their own icon and specific colors that will be displayed before the app starts loading.
To better optimize graphics and increase performance, mini apps can access basic hardware info about your device, such as its processing power and memory capacity — then automatically adjust settings to provide the smoothest experience.
Developers can now know when their mini app is minimized and restored from the app bar and make sure they handle transitions correctly.
If you are a developer, see this page for detailed documentation and the full list of changes, including an easier way for mini apps to access profile pictures and support for third-party validation of mini app data.
Everyone can already try out early implementations of some of the new features in apps like @playdeckbot and @major (the Major Maze game on the Games tab).
That's all for today's update. We're already working on the next big thing for mini apps and beyond.
November 17, 2024
The Telegram Team
2024-10-31 23:14:48
Today's update adds faster loading, better quality and new speed controls to videos, last edit timestamps, attaching media to sent messages, increased limits for mini apps, new monetization options for developers – and much more.
For videos newly uploaded to large channels, the video player now automatically selects a quality level based on your connection to save your data and load videos faster. Users can also manually select their preferred quality level – High, Medium or Low.
On iOS, we've also made it easier to switch to Picture-in-Picture Mode – simply swipe up to continue watching as you browse your chats. Swiping down still closes the video.
To adjust video quality, tap the
gear icon in the video player.
Since users no longer have to watch videos in the resolution in which they were uploaded, large channel owners can afford to post better-quality videos. They will no longer need to pre-process their videos for the best viewing experience — Telegram will now optimize each uploaded video for them and compress it in several qualities.
Users on weaker connections will automatically get more compressed videos, while those with high-speed internet can enjoy the full resolution.
These new video quality features are currently available for channels with thousands of subscribers.
For years, videos on Telegram have supported multiple speed settings – and now users can seamlessly speed up videos with new gestures without tapping through settings.
Just hold down on the right side of a video to activate 1.5x speed – and slide right gradually to increase the speed to up to 2.5x. Release your finger to return to normal speed.
On Android, you can double-tap on the left or right side of the video to skip 10 seconds in either direction.
If you forget to attach your photo, video or file before sending, you can quickly edit the message to add media in just two taps – rather than deleting it and starting over.
You can also edit sent media to re-edit photos or replace media in a message.
Edited messages now show a timestamp, displaying when the message was last edited. If a message has been edited more than once, it will show the time of the most recent edit.
Your messages in small groups and private chats also have detailed read receipts – showing the time when your message was opened by each member.
Group and channel owners can use the new format #hashtag@username for hashtags that only show posts and stories from the same chat when tapped.
For example, a user tapping #travel would see search results from all of Telegram – while #travel@durov would immediately open results only from the @durov channel.
Typing a hashtag in the message bar of public chats shows a special menu – allowing you to add the chat's username to the hashtag in just one tap.
Only public posts and public stories appear in global hashtag searches.
Bots and mini apps are now able to participate in revenue sharing from Telegram Ads – giving services another way to help support their development.
Telegram Ads are unobtrusive and privacy-conscious – supporting Telegram's sustainable monetization strategy, while sharing 50% of ad revenue with content creators and bot developers.
All Telegram bots can send up to 30 messages per second to their users – completely free of charge. To better accommodate large-scale services, bots are now able to enable increased message limits and send up to 1000 messages per second.
Sending messages with increased limits costs just 0.1 Star per message, paid with Telegram Stars from the bot's balance. Developers can receive Stars from paid content and digital products in their bot.
In case you want to know the exact number of heart (or star, or pumpkin) reactions your posts receive, press and hold the counters for more details.
That's it for today. Enjoy the new videos while we work on more stuff to put into demo videos for the next update!
P.S. Happy Halloween! We've added some new limited gifts for those celebrating.
October 31, 2024
The Telegram Team
2024-10-05 20:54:58
Users can now send Gifts to their friends. The recipients of gifts can display them on their profile pages or turn them into Stars. Telegram Stars can be used for many things, including supporting creators and buying services in mini apps.
Additionally, Telegram launched a platform for businesses to verify customer phone numbers: this new verification platform lets users easily confirm their phone numbers by receiving a code via Telegram and will cost businesses just $0.01 per user. We've also improved video chats, added new ways to report content on Telegram — and more.
Telegram users can now send each other gifts for Telegram Stars — celebrating holidays and congratulating contacts with animated artwork and custom messages.
Just in case you need to give a unicorn instead of a star. 
When you receive a gift, you can display it on the new 'Gifts' tab of your profile — or discard the gift and get some of its Stars to spend elsewhere, including on more gifts.
To send a gift, open the user's profile and tap ⋮ / ⋯ > Send a Gift. You can add any message or emoji.
Just in case the unicorn needs explaining.
When sending a gift, you can choose to hide your name. The recipient will still know who sent it, but nobody else will see your name if the gift is displayed on their profile.
We know from our own experience how expensive it can be for businesses to verify phone numbers of their customers. Starting today, any business, app or website can send verification codes via Telegram and pay for them on Fragment. Telegram codes are faster, cheaper, more secure and convenient than SMS or other alternatives.
Just in case you don't want to spend half your company's budget on codes.
Users will instantly receive messages with codes in a special chat inside Telegram.
Telegram's Gateway API is completely free to test. Interested developers can learn more in our detailed guide.
Each day, Telegram moderators remove millions of pieces of content that violates our Terms of Service. Since 2015, all Telegram apps allow users to report messages to moderators.
To further improve moderators' ability to process reports at scale and our AI capabilities, the reporting menu has been expanded with even more detailed options for each category. The list of reporting reasons is now dynamically updated from the server, allowing us to suggest the most relevant reporting reasons in real-time, adapting to unfolding events and trends.
Just in case you need to report precisely that.
To report a message, tap on Android, hold on iOS or right-click on Desktop or Web and select 'Report'.
Video chats on iOS have been rebuilt from scratch to increase performance and improve battery life.
This also means that devices now stay dramatically cooler on long calls — even with multiple video feeds from dozens of participants.
Just in case you already have warm gloves.
Video chats on Telegram let you show your camera and share your screen at the same time.
Telegram for Android now has support for livestreaming with RTMP — allowing you to generate a stream key and connect your video feed to popular apps like OBS Studio and XSplit Broadcaster.
Just in case androids dream of RTMP streams.
RTMP streams are available on all Telegram apps — they were first introduced on iOS and Desktop in 2022.
That's all for today, we'll be working on new features while you're busy unpacking gifts.
October 5, 2024
The Telegram Team
