Notification Sounds, Bot Revolution and More

Today's update adds creating your own notification tones, setting custom durations for muting chats or auto-deleting messages, as well as supercharged bots ready to outshine any website, improved forwarding that preserves replies, and a lot more.

Custom Notification Sounds

You can now turn any sound into a notification tone, creating custom alerts from your favorite music or even memes (and meows). Tap a short audio file or voice message in chat to instantly add it to your list of notification sounds, which you can assign to any chats.

Telegram tones are cross-platform and completely free – as they should be.

You can access your sounds on all your devices via Settings > Notifications and Sounds. There you can add new tones and set sounds for individual chats or entire groups of chats.

Tones currently support audio files and voice messages under 5 seconds up to 300 KB in size. Try some samples made by our team (and their pets) in the Notification Sounds channel.

Custom Mute Durations

For years, Telegram users have been able to temporarily mute chats to take a break from notifications, like for 8 hours or 2 days. Now you can also pause notifications for a specific duration, like the length of a midday nap or extended vacation.

Each chat has a streamlined menu for modifying alerts – choose Disable Sound to receive notifications silently, or one of the Mute options to turn off notifications completely.

On Android, tap 'Notifications' on a chat's info page or > Mute in the chat header. On iOS, tap 'Mute' on a chat's info page.

New Auto-Delete Menu in Profiles

Auto-Delete can be enabled in any chat to make a conversation more confidential or less cluttered. Now it takes fewer taps to enable and supports flexible timer settings – like 2 days, 3 weeks, 4 months, and more.

Enable Auto-Delete from or on a chat's info page.

Replies in Forwarded Messages

Telegram was the first app to make replies easy and efficient to navigate (2015). Swipe left on any message to reply to it. Your reply will include a small preview you can tap to instantly jump to the original message.

These same reply previews are now included when forwarding messages to other chats, so everyone can see the full context of your inside jokes.

You can always hide the sender's name or media captions if you want to forward a message more anonymously.

Bot Revolution

Since 2015, millions of people have utilized bots to convert files, shop online and even pay their taxes. Telegram bots already support seamless authorization, processing payments via 15 integrated payment providers (with Google Pay and Apple Pay out of the box), collecting feedback, delivering tailored notifications to users, and much more.

Today we're adding an entire new dimension, giving bot developers the tools to create infinitely flexible interfaces with JavaScript, one of the most popular programming languages in the world. With this, Telegram bots can completely replace any website.

To get an idea of what to expect from third-party Telegram bots, try ordering fictional fast food with our sample @DurgerKingBot.

Developers are welcome to study the Bot API documentation – and let their imagination run wild.

These interfaces can be programmed to match a user’s theme – adjusting color schemes in real time, for example when switching between Day and Night modes or setting custom themes.

Instantly Configure Bot Admins

Telegram bots can also handle small tasks like chat management by adding extra features, automating processes or helping moderators. Users can now quickly add bots to their group or channel right from the bot's profile and instantly configure rights and permissions for the bot.

Bots can only be added to channels as admins, while bots can be added to groups as both members or admins.

Improved Message Translation on iOS

The in-app translation feature for iOS devices has been expanded to support better quality translations from many more languages, such as Ukrainian – and is now able to translate the same languages as the Android app.

Enable Translation in Settings > Language to add a dedicated Translate button to the context menu when selecting a message. You can also exclude any languages you speak fluently – which will hide the translate button for those messages.

Improved Picture-in-Picture on Android

Any video on Telegram's mobile apps can be viewed Picture-in-Picture, so you can keep chatting while you watch live streams or cat compilations. This update adds improvements to the player window on Android – pinch to change its size, tap X to quickly close it, and enjoy the new rounded design.

Picture-in-Picture videos work in Telegram apps on every platform – including iOS, macOS and Telegram Desktop.

New Animations

The interface for changing your phone number in Settings has a new look, with animated ducks to walk you through the process. Changing your account's phone number updates where we send future login codes – all your chats, media and other Settings will stay exactly the same.

Keeping your number up to date is essential, so that you can always receive login codes and access your account. You can seamlessly change it by tapping your phone number in Settings.

More Animated Emoji

In case you're looking for Food That Moves, simply send a message with a single emoji to get one of these in a chat:

And that's all for Telegram's second spring update this year. Stay tuned for more!

April 16, 2022
The Telegram Team