Telegram adds support for custom notification sounds, mute duration, new animated emoji

Telegram has updated its apps with improvements for notifications, auto-delete, emojis and more. Here's a brief overview of the new features, and how to use them.

Custom Notification Sounds for chats

When it comes to notification sounds, most people are accustomed to hearing the default audio of apps. Telegram now supports custom notification tones, so you can set your favorite music, or even record a voice message and set it as your alert sound.

How to set a custom notification sound in Telegram

1. Go to the Settings menu, and tap on Notifications and Sounds.

2. Select the chat or group that you want to change the audio alert for, under the first section, Notifications for Chats.

Note: You can also set a custom notification for a chat by tapping the three-dot menu button > Mute > Customize > Sound.

3. Choose the Upload sound option, and navigate to the folder where your custom audio is located. The audio files must be 300KB or less in size, and under 5 seconds in length.

Telegram has a Notifications Sounds channel with several sample audios that you can use. Give it a shot.

Custom Mute Durations

Ever had a bunch of notifications arrive while you are working or studying? That can be really distracting, you could of course mute notifications. But if you forget to toggle the option back on, you might miss important notifications when they arrive. Telegram Messenger's latest update allows you to set up custom mute durations for chats, so you can silence the alerts for a specific time. That can be useful if you're in a meeting or on vacation, or just want a moment's peace.

How to set custom mute duration in Telegram

1. Open the conversation or group that you would like to mute.

2. Tap the three-dot menu, select the "Mute for" option.

3. Decide how long you'd like to receive notifications silently. You can set it to a few hours or days, the actual range starts from 1 hour, and goes up to 365 days.

Note: To disable the setting, simply tap the three-dot menu button in the chat and select the "Unmute" button.

New Auto-Delete menu

Telegram has supported auto-delete (self destructing chats) for messages for a long time. The new version of the app lets you access the options faster.

How to enable Auto-Delete in Telegram chats

1. Open the conversation, and tap on the user's avatar to view their profile.

2. Tap the three-dot menu and then on the "Auto-Delete" option, that appears at the top.

3. Select a duration for automatically deleting the chats, you may set it to trigger after a few days, weeks or months.

Replies in Forwarded Messages

Forwarding a message from a friend to another? You can now add some context to it, by swiping left on it, just like you're replying to a regular chat, and it will be included in the forwarded message.

New animated emoji

Telegram's latest version ships with new animated emoji for food. Just click the relevant emoji from the panel or type the name like fries or pizza, send the emoji, and the app will display an animated version of it in the chat.

Telegram's blog article says that it has improved the built-in message translation feature on its iOS app, and added support for more languages including Ukrainian. Picture-in-Picture mode on Android has also been tweaked with a rounded-corners design, and includes options like pinch to resize the video, an X button to dismiss the panel.

The app is known for its bots that you can use, for e.g. to create a custom sticker pack, pay bills etc. Now, the messaging service allows you to create bots with Javascript, which can replace a website. It has a demo bot called Durger King, that illustrates how the new bots work.

The new features are live in the current version of the mobile app for iOS and Android, and on the desktop program for Windows.

On a sidenote, WhatsApp Messenger has announced that it will increase attachment size to 2GB, add emoji reactions, and support larger group calls. You can read about it here.

Do you use Telegram bots?

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