Telegram, new features for user profiles, birthdays, channels and 14 other functions

Telegram announced to having integrated 17 new features in its messaging app and to have exceeded 900 million monthly active users. As highlighted by the company’s CEO, Pavel Durov, those implemented are not just “small improvements or bug fixes”, but most “significantly expand the way people use Telegram”,

Among the various functions, some for everyone, others only reserved for Pemiums, users can now explore recommended channels similar to those they have already joined, they have a new way to view your profile and show your channel in addition to new improved moderation tools for group administrators and much more.

Furthermore, a was also launched new reward system for channel owners which shares the 50% of the revenues from the advertisements shown on their channels. Withdrawals on Fragment are already available for suitable channels, without taxes.

The search interface has a new “Channels” tab which shows the channels that are followed by users. The tab also contains a list of recommended channels with similar topics where new content creators can be discovered.

“When viewing messages from a channel, you can pull up to move to the next unread channel in your list. Once you’ve seen all the new posts in your channels, you can continue scrolling to view recommended channels”

Channel suggestions are based only on the general topic of the channels you are already a part of.

The Settings have now a “My profile” section which allows you to see how your profile appears to other users and quickly edit any information. Now, moreover, it is You can pin up to 3 stories to the top of the page of the profile and some have been added small icons showing privacy settings of published stories, so you can quickly see if you need to edit them

Users can now also choose to add your birthday to your profile. On their birthday, anyone who visits the profile will be greeted “with animated confetti and lots of balloons”. Also, when someone’s birthday occurs, a banner will be shown in the chat list and you can click on it to quickly give a Telegram Premium subscription as a gift.

By default, your date of birth is visible only to your contacts. Like other profile information, your date of birth has detailed privacy settings that you can control from Settings > Privacy & Security > Date of Birth.

If you have a channel you can now also add it to your profile page. This way, a detailed preview of the latest post will be shown above the bio

Owners of collectible usernames, Furthermore, they can connect them to their Telegram account or channels, listing the extra names on the profile page. Tapping a collectible username or anonymous number on someone’s profile now displays additional information about the collectible, such as when it was purchased and for how much. Collectibles can be purchased and sold on the Fragment platform, which uses the TON blockchain.

Another novelty concerns the sharing your location that in real time with individual users or with entire group chats. With the new update, you can add more time to an existing shared location. Additionally, there is a new option for share your location indefinitelyuntil it is deactivated.

New settings have also been added that allow you to Check your notifications for reactions to your messages (available in Settings > Notifications & sounds > Reactions), Forwarded messages now also show the user’s profile photo from which they were forwarded and Premium users can now include animated and custom emojis in surveys.

When browsing the groups that have activated topics, you can tswipe up at the bottom of the chat to move to the next unread topic. Finally, Telegram’s cross-platform Desktop app now also supports Quick opening for websitesopening the page and all its media directly in the app with no loading times.

Group administrators can now select several messages and perform multiple moderation actions at the same time, in a new menu with individual buttons for each user and action to maximize efficiency. The menu also contains options for limit user permissions instead of immediately banning them from the community.

Administrators of groups with more than 200 members can also enable aggressive spam filtering to automatically identify and limit problematic users in their chat.

The Recent Actions section allows group administrators to View noteworthy events that have taken place in the chat in the last 48 hourssuch as deleted or edited messages and administrator activity.

With this update, recent actions are now more compact, with similar actions from the same administrator grouped together. Administrators can also see the replies and which topics messages from recent actions belong to.

Channel administrators now have an additional way to manage reactions, by selecting a maximum number of types of reactions that each post can have. This allows channels to frequently change available reactions (adding something relevant to a holiday, for example).

By default, subscribing to Telegram Premium hides ads in channels. If you want to continue seeing them, both to monitor your own ads and to help channels earn rewards, there is a new option to show sponsored posts in Settings > Telegram Business.

Premium users can also now view stories Turn on Stealth Mode in the stories menu to hide recent views and continue to hide them for the next 25 minutes. Stealth mode can also be activated from the chat list: simply press and hold on a story in your feed and select “View anonymously”.