Telegram, currently, is undeniably one of the best messaging services around and adds new features at an astonishing rate. Earlier this month, the messaging app added various new features, including global themes and other media improvements.
To close off a remarkable year, the Telegram team has pushed out one further update, version 8.4, which adds message reactions, spoiler tags, message translations amongst other nifty changes that we will look at below.
Message reactions are a staple across various platforms including Facebook Messenger, Discord and even Slack. WhatsApp is also rumoured to be looking to introduce them in a future update. Not to be left out, the new update has added the feature to the Telegram platform.
Their official blog highlights that they were the first messaging app to add animated and interactive emoji. They have now gone a step further to avail some of these emoji as reactions to share feelings and feedback, without sending any messages.
For instance, double-tapping a message sends a quick thumbs-up reaction, while if you need more, tap the message once, then you will have access to a host of reactions to choose from. Each one of them appears with a unique animation.
You are also provided with an option to change your default reaction to a different one in settings. Android: Chat Settings > Quick Reaction. iOS: Stickers and Emoji > Quick Reaction.
The reactions will be on by default in Private Chats, while for Groups and Channels, the admins will decide whether to turn them on and if turned on, they also get to decide which reaction emoji will be available in the chat.
If seeing a discussion concerning a movie or show that you are yet to watch grinds your gears, then the new spoiler formatting will please you. The new update allows messages containing information that you do not want to be visible immediately, to be hidden, and will only be available once the recipient taps on it. Once you choose the spoiler formatting, it will hide the selected part of the message in the chat, as well as in the chat list and notifications.
Chatting in public groups has now been made to be considerably easy with the introduction of a translating feature. Currently, over 500 million people use the messaging app worldwide, which logically leads to language barriers at some points.
Telegram seems bullish on the feature and mentions on the blog that you can translate a message to any language imaginable, all these within the app. To get started, you first need to enable the translation button in Telegram’s language settings, and then just hold down on any message to translate it. They have also provided an option to exclude any languages that you are fluent in, which will hide the translation button for those messages.
The translation feature will be available for all Android devices that support Telegram. However, iOS 15 and up will be required on Apple devices. Furthermore, the list of available languages will also depend on your phone’s operating system.
Finally, version 8.4 makes it possible for users to generate QR codes, similar to those found on Snapchat for any user that has a public username. The QR codes can also be generated for groups, channels and bots.
