Today, Telegram received an update on Saturday that brings several tweaks and improvements to the user interface, as well as new features for both regular and premium users.

The biggest update is the new Topics function for group chats. Basically it turns your groups into forums where one group can have multiple threads where you can have side chats. You will enable Themes in the group chat settings, which will allow you to start creating topics.

These individual themed chats have their own notification settings, plus they can use polls and all the other features that you would use in a normal group chat.

Telegram suggests that this new “Themes” feature is mainly for larger groups that need better management. They have some kind of plan for small groups coming later this year. The return of the forum!

Telegram topics

While Themes is the biggest feature, Telegram has also added the following:

  • Change text size on Android: A new text size slider lets you adjust text size, link previews, response titles, and more.
  • New iOS Dark Theme: iPhone owners get a new dark theme that makes “colors more balanced with improved blur effects.”
  • New animations: There are new animations in the Telegram UI, such as for swiping left to reply to a message, or when something is loading in a chat. There’s also a new call menu that shows up when you tap on someone’s phone number.
  • Interactive emoji: In this update, Telegram added 4 new interactive emoticons.
  • 12 new emoji sets (Premium): For Telegram Premium users, you will find 12 new emoji packs, including some for Halloween that happened 5 days ago.
  • Voice to Text Video (Premium): Premium users can now also convert video to text just like they could make audio messages in the previous update. So now if you see a video in a chat, the little right bottom voice-to-text button will instantly transcribe it.
  • Collectible usernames: And finally, Telegram is doing something with collectible usernames and the blockchain. No idea.

Emoji sets for Telegram

Link to google play: Telegram

// Telegram