Telegram brings New Theme Editor, Send When Online and More

Telegram has rolled out a new update bringing a new Theme Editor, Send When Online, Verifiable Builds and more.

Theme Editor 2.0

Using the new theme editor in Chat Settings (or Appearance Settings on iOS), you can quickly tweak the style of elements in Telegram chats and add gradients to both your messages and your background. Users can easily switch between tabs Main Color, Background and My Messages.

Once you’re done editing, you can quickly share the result of your work with friends so that they can continue tuning your theme. This update also includes dozens of new patterns you can apply to your background.

Telegram has added a load of new predefined color schemes for Telegram’s default themes.

Send When Online
For messages that have to be delivered at the perfect moment, there is now the option to schedule messages to be sent when your recipient comes online. Note that this option is only available if you are allowed to see your recipient’s online status.

Improved Venue Sharing
Location sharing has been updated to make finding venues easier. You can now tap a place directly on the map to select it.

View Search Results as a List
The Search function allows you to easily jump between messages containing a keyword – or sent by a particular person, or even from a certain day. Tapping the bottom bar will now switch to list view in case you want to see all the results on one page.

On Android, you could also select several messages without leaving Search Mode and this feature has now been implemened on iOS.

Podcast and Audiobook Support
Users have always been able to share files of up to 1,5 GB, but podcasts and audiobooks now get special treatment. Telegram apps will remember your last position when resuming playback of audio files longer than 20 minutes and if you’d like to make podcasts get to the point a little faster, try the new 2x button.

On iOS, you can skip forward and back with high-precision scrubbing: just hold on the progress bar and slide your finger down, then left or right.

New On Telegram for Android

Switch to Night Mode Faster
Telegram has had Night Mode since 2017 and these are now even easier to control, with the Night Mode Switch at the top of the menu. Maps are now also available in Night Mode.

Sleek New Animations
Telegram has peppered the interface with little ripple animations when you press on things to help you get more joy out of buttons. Snappy new animations await when jumping between messages in a chat, opening global search or pulling out the archive folder. To get a closer look at a user’s profile picture, drag down on their profile page.

Select Parts of Messages
Following in the footsteps of the iOS app, Android now also lets you select a portion of the message text to copy or share, instead of only the full text.

Multi-sharing from Other Apps
It is now easier than ever to share content from other apps with your friends. You can now tap and hold to select multiple recipients – and even add a comment in case your savage subtweet needs some context.

Mark Archive as Read
You can now clear up those extra unread message counters in your archive by tapping and holding the archive folder and marking them all read.

Finally, in Telegram for ANdroid you can сhoose video quality in a more intuitive way when sending videos and sending contacts now uses a simple, card-style interface that won’t take up your whole screen (unless you pull up to expand it).

When you’re done listening to a voice message with your phone up to your ear, Telegram automatically records a reply – but now you can disable that by turning off Raise to Speak in your Chat Settings.

New on Telegram for iOS

You’ve been able to adjust the size of message text on Telegram from the beginning, but now you can scale the font size throughout the app.

External browsers are now supported for opening links – you can select your preferred app in Settings > Data and Storage > Other.

Your most popular Telegram chats were recently added to the iOS Share Sheet. In case you‘d like to control what can (or can’t) appear there, you can use the new toggles under Settings > Data and Storage > Other > Share Sheet.

Telegram for iOS has added a way to swiftly switch accounts right from your home screen on iOS 13. Simply hold down on the app icon any time you need to change costumes.

Remember that you can use Telegram with multiple accounts, switching between up to 3 phone numbers without logging out.

The Storage Usage page has been redesigned to more quickly find the settings you‘re looking for. It also shows your device’s storage status, and how much space all those other pesky apps are using compared to Telegram. Bigger, after all, is not always better. Selecting multiple messages in a group or channel now gives you the option to clear the chat’s cache. Check out Settings > Data and Storage > Storage Usage for more options.

In case you’re looking to leave some large groups and start fresh in the new decade, long member lists will collapse, so you can get to the ‘Leave Group’ button without scrolling.

By the way, swiping on a group or channel from the chat list and selecting ‘Delete’ is still the shortest way out, but now there is more than one way to leave a group.

Verifiable Builds

As of this update, Telegram becomes the first messaging app to allow you to independently verify that the code on GitHub is the exact same code that was used to build the app you downloaded from App Store or Google Play.