The popular instant messaging app, Telegram, developers have just announced a new update that brings a set of unique features that are coming to the application, to enrich the users' experience and give them more tools to express themselves and interact with friends, family, and the world.
First, admins of Telegram groups of 200 or more members can now organize their group chats into topics. Topics function as individual chats within the group, supporting their own shared media and notification settings, and members are free to chat on any topic they want, using all their favorite features like polls, pinned messages, and bots.
This useful add-on allows administrators to organize group chats by dividing them into topics with custom names, which makes groups look more aesthetic, and makes it easier for users to find the topic that suits them and discuss it without interruption. The group topics feature is only available to large groups at the moment, with Telegram plans to launch later this year a different set of tools tailored to small groups.
This update also provides users with Collectible Usernames, a feature that allows users to assign multiple additional usernames to their accounts and public chats.
Collectible usernames are digital assets and their ownership is secured by the TON blockchain network, but unlike basic usernames, they can be less than 5 characters long, making it possible for users to get some unique and special username such as @sport, @king, @meta or @love.
Telegram users can already have their own unique username (aka a basic username), but now and in addition to that, they can also buy additional usernames via the Fragment platform and link them to their Telegram accounts, then choose between them and set them to their liking. Users can also sell their collectible usernames on the same platform, and once acquired, the user has full control over their collectible username, and can trade it in or keep it for later use.
For Telegram Premium users, this update can also now convert video messages to text, by tapping on the” ➡ A” that appears next to the video, allowing them to get an instant text transcript. In addition, this update brings 12 new Custom Animated Emoji packs that premium subscribers can use in any messages and captions, or set as statuses.
Furthermore, the dark theme on iOS devices has been updated and the colors are now more balanced with better blur effects while scrolling through chats and the chat list, and for the Telegram app on Android, changing the text size in chat settings now increases the size of all chat texts including link previews, reply headers and more.
Last, the Telegram app also got some minor UI updates, including a new animation when you swipe left to reply, 4 new interactive emoji (😴👨💻🤓👀), and 3 more chat reactions (👻🎃ðŸ˜), and a new menu with a handful call options when tapping a user's phone number in their profile page.
