What you need to know
- Telegram is expanding its voice and video message transcription feature beyond Premium users, allowing free users to convert up to two messages per week into text.
- Joining a channel just got more interesting with Telegram’s improved channel discovery feature, offering recommendations based on similar subscriber bases.
- Users can also now include video comments or reactions in their stories, with the ability to resize and reposition the video message on the screen.
- Telegram also introduces profile color customization for Premium users, custom wallpapers for individual chats, and reaction emoji customization for channel admins.
Telegram just gave its iOS and Android apps a major upgrade, making it easier to find cool new channels and allowing non-paying users to get in on voice transcriptions.
In its latest blog post, Telegram announced that it’s sharing the voice-to-text transcription love with everyone, not just the Premium users. Now, anyone can transcribe voice and video messages or even translate audio into another language. However, non-paying users get to convert only two messages per week into text.
Not only did the platform open up voice transcriptions to everyone, but it also threw in some extra goodies. Now, when you join a new Telegram channel, the app will suggest similar channels to help you discover even more interesting ones.
Furthermore, you can easily repost stories from your friends or favorite channels to your own page with just two taps. You can also spice it up by adding text, audio, or video comments. To do that, hit the share arrow and choose Repost Story. Just remember, only stories visible to Everyone can be reposted. If you want to keep it private, there’s a separate visibility setting for your repost.
And if your channels allow posting stories, you can check out all the details on your story’s performance—views, shares, and reactions—with graphs to see how it’s all going down. And for admins, there’s a fresh interface to manage reactions.
Telegram is also adding a splash of color to its Premium features. Now, you can personalize your chats with custom wallpapers and make your profile stand out with a unique color scheme.
The app has also added a Thanos-inspired disappearing message animation for iOS users. When a message you’ve set to self-destruct vanishes, it’ll do so with a pixelated explosion.