Telegram Emoji Platform, Custom Animated Emoji Packs, Gifting Telegram Premium, and More
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Telegram for iOS was updated to version 8.9.

⚠️ Other Telegram clients will receive the new version soon.

Custom Animated Emoji (Premium)
• The new animated emojis can be included message texts and captions, adding even more emotion to your chats.
• Premium users get access to 10 initial custom emoji packs, containing more than 500 Premium emojis — and counting.
• Animated emojis are visible to all users, regardless of having an active Premium subscription.
• Ability to view the sets used in a specific message.
• A tooltip of animated emojis will appear as soon as you type any regular emoji.
• You are able to try them out by sending them to Saved Messages.
• You can also upload your own animated emoji packs packs with unique characters for Telegram Premium subscribers to use.

Interactive Custom Emojis
• Popular custom emojis are also interactive when sent in private chats.
• All users can enjoy full-screen animations whenever possible.
• Widely-used emojis, such as 😂, 😍, 😁, 😱, ❤️, 👍, 🎉, and even some less-known ones like 💸, 🔥, 👻, now have additional animations.

Privacy Settings for Voice Messages (Premium)
• Premium users now have a setting that enables them to control who is able to send them voice/video messages: everyone, contacts, or no one.
• Premium users can now block voice messages and set exceptions for users or group of users from Settings > Privacy > Voice Messages.

Gifting Telegram Premium
• You can now gift Telegram Premium to friends, family and co-workers at a discount for 3, 6 or 12 months.
• Gifted subscriptions will instantly arrive, along with a special message.
• The gifting option is located at Profile > ⋮ > Gift Premium.

Updated Sticker Panel (iOS)
• You can now quickly and easily switch between stickers, emojis and GIFs.
• Optimized performance for aged devices when scrolling through stickers and emojis.
• A tooltip of animated emojis will appear as soon as you type any regular emoji.

New Interactive Emojis
• The following emojis now have full-screen animations: 🍌, 🤨, ⚡️, 💔, 🏆, 😐.
• To trigger the full-screen animations, simply send one of those emojis to a private chat.

Article: telegram.org/blog/custom-emoji/en

Android: Google Play, APK from official website or verified channel.
iOS: App Store.
Telegram Desktop: with official website or GitHub.
Telegram for macOS: from App Store or verified channel.
Unigram for Windows 10: Microsoft Store | Download | Installation help

#update #Android #iOS #Desktop #macOS #Unigram

Apple demanded Telemoji to be removed

Beta version of Telegram had animated versions of Apple's emoji — Telemoji, but they are unavailable on release. Part of the animations Telegram was intending to provide for free.

Pavel Durov unveiled the reasoning behind this decision: Apple demanded for the animated versions of the default emoji to be removed from the emoji picker.

This is likely due to the fact Apple didn't like how Telegram uses Apple's trademarked emoji design for their own products.

Premium users can still use the cancelled emoji set by adding the "Restricted Emoji" pack.

Pavel Durov has also announced the custom emoji will be used for profile statuses and reactions — Premium users will get access to these features first in coming weeks.

Telegram Premium FAQ

Answers to frequently asked questions related to Telegram Premium are now on the official website.

— Future developments for Telegram Premium could include community-focused options.

— When subscribing via @PremiumBot, the currency and price of your first month of Premium is based on the phone number of your Telegram account. After this initial payment, all future payments are calculated for the default currency of your payment method. In order to qualify for localized pricing, your payment method must be issued by a financial institution in that country and have a local billing address.

— Telegram does their best to keep the cost of Telegram Premium as consistent as possible – this may include slight variations to reflect local living standards and keep Telegram Premium obtainable for everyone. When you subscribe, the price you see may include store or third-party fees, local taxes and any other applicable fees that are outside of Telegram’s control.

— If Telegram Premium is not available in your country, it’s possible that local laws and regulations prevent people from accessing Telegram Premium in your country. It’s also possible that your country isn’t supported by the payment processors Telegram relies on. In either case, we continue to do our best to keep all Telegram services available for everyone.

You can ask your questions regarding Telegram Premium in the comments or in our chat.

#faq

🎉 Telegram becomes 9 years old!

In the 14th August of 2013, Telegram iOS, the first Telegram client appeared, and a few weeks later, Telegram Android came.

Over the past years, Telegram has announced 10 massive updates, including those which brought live streams, group video chats, reactions, web bots, video stickers, the emoji platform, and much more.

Alongside those, Telegram Premium and the advertisement platform were launched.

Telegram's mobile clients are currently at version 8.9.

#birthday

Telegram Desktop has been updated to version 4.1.1

What's new:
— Fix editing media captions with animated emoji.
— Fix viewing animated emoji sets used in a message.
— Fix premium sticker tooltip auto-show in channel comments.
— Fix main window position and size restoring after relaunch.
— Other bug fixes and minor improvements.

Download: with official website or GitHub.

#update #desktop

Huawei Services Support

The version of Telegram for Android in AppGallery is now supporting Huawei services for location and push notifications.

It previously used services from Google which led its operations to be unstable.

If you own a Huawei device, tell us if you have noticed better performance after Telegram's recent update.

You can download Telegram from AppGallery here.

Scams on the Telegram Ad Platform

Yesterday, the first scam channel appeared on the Telegram Ad Platform.

The scammers create hundreds of fake channels which get approved for the Telegram Ad Platform, and then they use them to redirect users to their fraudulent channels.

Requiring companies to pay €2,000,000 has not prevented the platform from scammers which purchase advertisement packages from bigger companies.

Telegram is already aware of the incident and is taking action. Telegram Info Editors recommended a "Report" button for sponsored messages, so it may appear any time soon.

Telegram revokes inactive names

In the last couple of days, Telegram has revoked the public addresses of hundreds of public chats without warning their owners.

In the most of the cases, the affected chats where those which had no content, or no content for over a year.

A close source to Telegram reported that this is a common practice, and that it won't be possible to reoccupy the revoked addresses for a while.

Furthermore, according to the same source, there are plans to reform the public usernames system.

You can no longer gift cheap Telegram Premium subscriptions to users from other countries

In the latest update, it became possible to gift a premium subscription to other users. To save money, some users began to gift Premium subscriptions through accounts created using phone numbers from countries where its price was much lower than in other countries.

The Telegram team noticed and made it impossible to do so, and only users with a linked phone number from the same country as yours can gift subscriptions at their regional price. If you gift Telegram Premium to an user residing in a country different than yours, then the prices will be internationalized (for example, in dollars, an annual subscription will cost $35.99).

Pavel Durov intends to deeply integrate the TON cryptocurrency into Telegram

Durov was admired by the success of the TON Foundation and stated that by having Telegram's user base, the cryptocurrency could achieve more.

He also described scenarios like the transfer of @username's using smart contracts in cryptocurrency, as well as the creation of stickers and emojis, which would form a market based on TON.

Back in 2020, the US Securities and Exchange Commission banned the issuance of TON. Consequently, Telegram officially disowned the platform, and stopped participating in its development.

After a while, the TON Foundation was announced which has no official ties to Telegram, but apparently in a close alliance. A community of enthusiasts continues to develop TON and has plans to circumvent the SEC ban. Telegram intends to integrate TON in a way that looks like the TON team independently provides its services under a partnership.

Judging by the reaction of users to the post, most users do not appreciate the addition of the Web 3.0 philosophy into Telegram. It was even proposed earlier to integrate NFTs, to which the audience also reacted negatively.

Originally, TON was an attempt to monetize Telegram. Given that the messenger now has an advertising platform and paid subscriptions, it's hard to say how ready Pavel Durov is to go against the interests of users for the sake of another source of income.

Update: (Perhaps) due to the high number of negative reactions (around 30K), reactions were turned off in Durov's channel.

Petition to Return the Revoked Addresses of Telegram Channels

On August 19, Telegram revoked the public addresses of millions of channels around the world without warning their owners.

Those channels were often used as personal portfolios, public archives, and directories, which didn't need to post content often.

The process made many people upset and brought uncertainty to Telegram itself. Such actions without prior agreements with channel owners make Telegram less trustworthy to be used for any project.

The Telegram Info editorial board, @tginfo, and its international volunteers crew demand Telegram to:

• Return the confiscated public addresses back to their owners.
• Notify the owners of inactive channels about such actions.
• Allow users to claim public names that might be at risk.

If you want to participate in the petition, react with a 👍 to this post below and share this post with your audience. This is the only possible way to tell Telegram that the majority of its users are against this action.

Or if you think this action is a reasonable one, you can always react with a 👎, along with your thoughts about its advantages.

Vote here: t.me/tginfoen/1474

New link format in Telegram

Today Telegram launches link format for public usernames. Now every user can use public links like tginfoen.t.me and https://tginfoen.t.me.

The only real difference from the classic t.me/username link is that the username is at the beginning of the URL.

Such links are already working in all browsers, according to the Durov's channel.

Pavel Durov promises to return 99% of seized usernames into general availability

Pavel Durov made a post on his channel, claiming that 70% of all public addresses were taken by Iranian cybersquatters.

“In mid-August, we withdrew all public Telegram addresses linked to channels that were empty or inactive for the last year. We will gradually reintroduce 99% of these addresses into public use, this time with algorithmic and geolocation limitations so that more users, and not just a select few, can benefit,” — Durov announced.

It's important to note that there is no guarantee the revoked usernames will be available to be claimed back by their original owners. Returning these names into general availability imposes a new era of cybersquatting.

At the same time Pavel Durov finds the earlier suggested way of distributing the usernames to be the most optimal and fair:

“This way, those who acquire these catchy links will be motivated to put them to good use and bring value to our users with original content hosted at recognizable t.me addresses.”

In anticipation of the things to come, Telegram introduced the new link format, which we announced here.

Local Transcription on iOS

“Durov's Code” editors noticed (in Russian) you can use voice recognition engine from Apple on Telegram for iOS.

The feature has appeared in the June update together with Telegram Premium and is intended for testing.

By default, your speech is turned into text on Google Cloud server on your demand. Google's technology is used by Telegram to provide a high-quality service in many languages.

The Local Transcription option uses Apple's engine built into your iPhone or iPad. This way, the feature turns audio into text right on your device without sending data to Apple servers.

Apple's engine has lower recognition quality compared to Google's cloud recognition, especially in less popular languages. It also can't recognize longer messages, yet it works faster.

It makes sense to enable the option only if you need faster recognition at the price of getting a lower quality transcription, or if you have no Internet. The feature is unavailable without Telegram Premium and doesn't work in Secret Chats.

No need to be afraid of Google Cloud's voice recognition: despite of a lot of concerns, the company is not interested in Telegram users' messages. The agreements Google signs with other businesses to provide its Cloud services have an extremely strict privacy policy, so your voice messages are sent from Telegram's servers directly only to be transcribed once. You can read in more detail about why Google doesn't want Telegram users' voice messages in “Durov's Code” article (in Russian).

How to enable Local Transcription in Telegram for iOS
• Quickly tap the Settings icon 10 times in a row (or your profile picture if you have multiple accounts).
• The Debug menu will open. Find Local Transcription toggle and turn it on. We do not recommend you changing any other options in this menu.

Telegram user data disclosure policy in Germany

Users in Germany received a message from Telegram's service account. The messenger team decided to find out whether German users support the app's current Privacy Policy and whether they want to reduce or increase the number of times Telegram could potentially disclose data to the country's authorities, including the police.

“However, to prevent terrorist groups from misusing our platform, our Privacy Policy in place since 2018 allows us to disclose the IP addresses and phone numbers of suspected terrorists at the request of the government, supported by a court order,” the messenger team reminds.

To find out the opinion of the users Telegram decided to open survey, in which only users with German phone numbers can take part. Three different options were given to choose from:

OPTION 1: No change. Telegram will still be allowed to hand over the IP addresses and phone numbers of suspected terrorists only on the basis of a court decision. This option is already included in Telegram's current Privacy Policy.

OPTION 2: At the request of German police authorities, Telegram may disclose the IP addresses and phone numbers of suspected users, even if not confirmed by a court decision. This option, if approved, would be entirely new for Telegram and would therefore require changes to our Privacy Policy for German users.

OPTION 3: Telegram is not allowed to share user information under any circumstances, including the IP addresses and phone numbers of suspected terrorists. If this option is chosen, Telegram would change its data structure and Privacy Policy for German users.

The poll is active until 5th of September, 10:00 UTC.
It was previously reported that the German government had agreed with Telegram executives to further cooperate and continue to exchange views.

#Germany

Telegram WebZ updated to version 1.51

👏 What's new:
— Custom Animated Emoji: Messages with custom emoji are now viewable.
— Gifting Telegram Premium: Premium users can send friends, family, and coworkers a prepaid subscription from their profile for 3, 6, or 12 months – at a discount.
— Privacy Settings for Voice Messages: Control who can send you voice and video messages with Telegram Premium.

🚀 Optimized:
— Increased download speed.
— Optimized Premium modal.

💪 Fixed:
— Fixed ‘No File’ error when downloading media.
— Fixed issues with hiding video controls.
— Various RTL layout fixes.
— Fixed scrolling with mouse wheel inside horizontal containers.
— Fixed jumping text cursor on Windows.
— Fixed display problems with the ‘Next’ button in payments.
— Fixed voting in polls on mobile devices triggering a quick reaction.
— Fixed page reload when rotating device during a call.
— Fixed hanging calls after signing out.
— Fixed copying message content and removed the ‘Report’ option in scheduled messages.
— Small fixes and improvements for bots running web apps.

web.telegram.org/z

#webz

What to expect from the upcoming version of Telegram for Android

Yesterday a new beta version of Telegram for Android was released, it includes the following new features:

— Profile Status: custom emojis in profile
— Custom Reactions and react to the same message multiple times 
— Updated reactions settings in groups
— Themed Icon
— Prioritizing Downloads
— New Media Browsing Animations
— Premium Badge in Chats
— Copying Custom Emojis

Detailed descriptions of the listed features are at Beta Info.

#Android

Using email in Telegram

Telegram has updated its Privacy Policy, adding information about using an email address as an alternative authorization method.

Here are the main points:

— Since September 2022, Telegram may ask some users to specify their email address.
— Users will be able to receive login codes by email instead of SMS (with the possibility of authorization via Google or Apple).
— The email address for authorization will be stored separately from the email required to recover the two-step authentication password, and will also be used only to send you confirmation codes when logging into your account.
— The email address for logging in to the profile will be stored by Telegram until it is changed or the messenger account itself is deleted.

It is important to clarify that registration in Telegram will continue to occur only by phone number.

For more information about how the messenger uses information about your email, see paragraph 3.2 of the current Telegram Privacy Policy.

Telegram has updated the press page

The official website has detailed information about the messenger for the media.

Rich text formatting on iOS 16

Users that updated to iOS 16 could've noticed a problem: text formatting options are gone.

While the problem waits to be solved, Telegram Info suggests using Markdown as a workaround, which can access most of text formatting features, or keyboard shortcuts, if you are using iPad with keyboard attached to it.

Bold: **Bold**
Italic: __Italic__
Strikethrough: ~~Strikethrough~~
Monospace: `Monospace`
Spoiler: ||Spoiler||

Markdown doesn't support underlined text and hyperlinks.

#iOS

Telegram WebZ updated to version 1.52.0

👏 What's new:
— Added support for username.t.me links.
— ‘Update Telegram’ button now automatically appears when an update is available.
— Games can now request a share window.

🚀 Optimized:
— Square images for web page previews are now properly displayed.
— Auth screen transitions are now smoother.
— Changelog notifications are only delivered every 3 days.
— Interface performance was heavily optimized.
— Initial app bundle is now even more lightweight.

💪 Fixed:
— Fixed several issues causing missing chats.
— Fixed frozen UI on Android after selecting ‘Nice and Fast’ animation setting.
— Fixed Play button overlapping with Slide Left button in Media Viewer.
— Fixed quick reaction button not showing in some cases.
— Fixed names and profile pictures for deleted accounts.
— Numerous other layout fixes.

web.telegram.org/z

#webz