Tech News & Tricks

2022-01-17 19:48:54 Open / Comment

2021-12-31 19:29:56 2021 was a phenomenal year for Telegram. It became the most downloaded app in the world in January, managed to welcome 70 million new users in just one day in October, and was declared the fastest growing app of the year in December.

We know we owe this growth to you – our users – so we carefully listened to your feedback and kept making Telegram better for you throughout the year. Yesterday we released our 12th major update this year, packed with the features you requested – like reactions and message translation

With each update we try to not simply add a missing feature, but instead expand its boundaries and redefine how it looks, feels and works. We hope that this approach can improve the quality of human communication and bring more efficiency, happiness and joy to the world

The spoiler animations we just rolled out are pure magic, while the custom animated QR codes in this update make QRs sexy again. The newly added message reactions are already spectacular, but it's just the start: we are now busy finding ways to make them even more stunning

I'm grateful for your love of Telegram and excited by what we can do for you in 2022. Thank you – and have a glorious New Year! Open / Comment

2021-12-30 18:29:10 We invite all 30 winners of the design contest to take part in the second stage of the competition – to design the main screens of a native Telegram app for Windows 11.

Prize fund: 40,000 USD
Deadline: January 22, 2022 @ 23:00 Dubai Time
Who can take part: All 30 winners of the first stage
Announcement of results: January 30, 2022
Goal: Design main screens for the Windows 11 native Telegram app in accordance with the newest guidelines of Windows 11 and using the latest approaches of that platform (e.g. blurred backgrounds). The mockups and functionality shown should also be consistent with the Telegram apps on other platforms.

The screens that are necessary to design:

- Chat list with all types of chats shown (channels, groups, secret chats, bots)
- Chats with all types of messages shown (voice and video messages, videos, photos, polls, documents)
- The UI to send files/media and add captions to them.
- The UI to record voice and video messages.
- Voice/Video chats and 1-to-1 calls
- Main settings and Chat settings

To check out what a native Windows Telegram app looks like, you can try Unigram @unigramappx. It is possible that the best design solutions will be implemented into Unigram. To check the functionality of Telegram desktop apps, please refer to https://desktop.telegram.org Open / Comment

2021-12-30 15:01:33 You can generate QR codes for any users that have a public username – as well as for public groups, channels and bots.

Tap the QR code icon next to the username of a person or chat, customize its appearance, then share it in any app.

Late December Features: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • More Open / Comment

2021-12-30 15:01:33 Messages in any chat can now be translated to your language directly in the app – so you can understand messages sent from anywhere in the world.

Enable translation in Settings > Language to add a dedicated Translate button to the context menu when selecting a message.

Late December Features: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • More Open / Comment

2021-12-30 14:59:23 New spoiler formatting allows you to hide parts of your messages under a special animation in chat, as well as in the chat list and notifications.

Tap the animation to reveal the hidden text – spoilers can also be combined with other text formatting for bold punchlines or hidden hyperlinks.

Late December Features: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • More Open / Comment

2021-12-30 14:59:23 Telegram’s latest update adds reactions to directly share your feelings and feedback on messages. Double tap for a quick or select the message for more reactions like , all with unique animations.

Reactions are always on in 1-on-1 chats, while group and channel admins can decide whether to enable them, and which emoji are available.

Late December Features: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • More Open / Comment

2021-12-30 14:41:04 https://telegram.org/blog/reactions-spoilers-translations Open / Comment

2021-12-28 15:14:56 A recent report has proven that Telegram sticks to its promise of keeping its user data private, while apps like WhatsApp give real-time user data to third parties, and despite their numerous claims about "E2E encryption", can also disclose message contents.

The report has confirmed that Telegram is one of the few messaging apps that doesn't breach their users’ trust.

I am not surprised. Most other apps couldn't guarantee privacy to their users even if they wanted to. Because their engineers reside in the US, they have to secretly implement backdoors in their apps when the US government orders them to. If an engineer speaks publicly about it, then can go to jail for breaching a gag order.

In most cases the agencies don't even need a court order to extract private information from messaging apps such as WhatsApp, and in other cases, court documents are shrouded in secrecy. Some supposedly secure apps have been funded by government agencies from their inception (e.g Anom, Signal).

For many years the National Security Agency (NSA) has been making sure that international encryption standards are in line with what the NSA can decipher, and all other approaches to encryption are labeled as "non-standard" or "home-brew". Through their proxies in the encryption industry (like this one), the NSA imposed flawed standards onto the encryption used by the rest of the world, cautioning everyone else from "rolling out their own encryption".

No wonder US-based apps such as WhatsApp are plagued with backdoors – intentionally planted security loopholes that governments (and anybody else) can use to hack smartphones and extract private data from people.

I hear our US-based competitors are frustrated that they can't match Telegram's growth, despite heavily investing in marketing (something Telegram has never had to invest in). But in order to match our growth, they have to first make sure their actions match their marketing claims. Until then, data breaches and security issues in their apps will, unfortunately, remain unavoidable. Open / Comment

2021-12-23 14:52:27 When Telegram said goodbye to TON last year, I expressed the hope that future generations of developers would one day carry on with our vision of a mass-market blockchain platform.

So I was inspired to see the champions of Telegram's coding contests continue developing the open TON project, which they rebranded to Toncoin.

I'm proud that the technology we created is alive and evolving. When it comes to scalability and speed, TON is still years ahead of everything else in the blockchain realm. It would have been a shame to see this project not benefitting humanity.

Unlike the original TON, Toncoin is independent from Telegram. But I wish its team the same success. Coupled with the right go-to-market strategy, they have all they need to build something epic Open / Comment