Telegram is a popular messaging app for many reasons. And this time, it's showing that it is indeed a powerful alternative to the ubiquitous WhatsApp.
As an app with privacy in mind, end-to-end encryption and more, Telegram is always experimenting with new features. And with version 7.1 of the app, Telegram has announced a variety of fresh updates, including search filters, anonymous admins, channel comments and more.
First launched in 2013, and co-founded by Pavel Durov, it took the messaging app only seven years to go from zero to 400 million monthly active users.
Competing directly against WhatsApp and some others, including Signal, the messaging app is unique in many ways.
And knowing that the demand is increasing, the app is again delivering what it thinks its users need.
With the newly added features, Telegram is becoming even more powerful than ever, especially to those who want to stay away from Facebook's grip.
First up, is the smarter search feature.
Frequent Telegram user may have find it difficult to search for a particular message, media or links inside the app.
Knowing that searching for things could prove to be a bit of challenge, Telegram introduces Search Filters, so users can filter search result by type: Media, Links, Files and others.
To search a particular time period, users can, for example, type “August 14” or “Yesterday”. Typing the name of any person, group, channel or bot will add a filter by source.
"These search filters can be combined, which lets you look for something as specific as messages with a link, sent in March 2016, containing the word 'boat,'" wrote Telegram on its blog post.
There there is the anonymous group admins feature.
As an encrypted messaging app, Telegram has been used to organize protests for democracy and freedom in many parts around the world. This is why Telegram is introducing another tool for organizers to create "safer protests".
Here, admins of groups can go anonymous, in which they will be hidden in the list of group members. By toggling the 'Remain Anonymous' setting that is made available for admins of groups, this will activate the 'Batman' mode, which will make admins remain unnoticed.
Activating this mode will also sign their messages with the group name, similar to channel posts.
And speaking of channels, Telegram has added a new comment button for posts on channels with discussion groups.
Tapping on the button allows users to comment on any post in the channel. To make things easier to follow, all comments on a post will show up within a thread of their own. The comments will also show up in the discussion group within channels.
For those who aren't members of a channel discussion, they will receive a notification every time someone replies to one of the users' comments via the new chat Replies feature.
The update also includes a host of subtle theme changes.
For Telegram users on Android, the changes include animations. For example, there are animations when users expand or hide the keyboard, and switch between day and night themes.
There are also animations for pop-ups for deleting messages, changing notifications, saving media, and so forth.
Along with the new features mentioned above, the update also brings the ability to let users take a closer look at anyone’s profile picture in a group chat by pressing and holding on the picture.
And in the case users have multiple accounts on the platform, Telegram can finally allow them to preview the chat list of their other accounts using the same gesture in the accounts switcher.
Furthermore, the update introduces a bunch of new animated emojis.
Telegram is undoubtedly one of the most feature-rich messengers out there, but at this time, it still lacks one crucial feature that is already available on most alternatives: video calling.
The lack of video calling and group video calling support means that Telegram users have to rely on other messaging apps to use these features.
This is going to change soon enough, as earlier this 2020, Telegram said that it has been planning to do that.
And this was shown when Telegram on its 7th birthday, announced the launch of its very own video calling feature in alpha version.