Telegram Messenger is one of the best things to happen to smartphone communication, if you have disagreements, please feel free to present them in the comment section below but that’s my stand and for this reason I will give you five tips and tricks (I honestly don’t know why people say this but it makes it sound really cool, right?) to turn you into a Telegram pro user.
There is no guarantee that you have never come across any of the following tips so just flow with it:
Turning off message preview
Peeping Thomas is always looking and there are things that should not be seen or read by anyone else apart from you and thus Telegram allows us to hide message previews from our notifications, thus your new message notification will only include the name of the sender and that’s it.
To do it, go to Telegram’s Settings -> Notification and Sounds and turn off “Message Preview”.
Surprisingly, WhatsApp has this feature but only for iOS devices and Windows Phone (Android users take you L in peace).
Hiding Telegram media from Gallery
Another trick to keep snoopers at bay. Telegram has an option to prevent all the images that get sent to you either individually, via channels or via groups from ending up in your gallery – WhatsApp should take a leaf from this tree. To hide your Telegram media from your gallery, simply go to Settings and disable “Save to Gallery”. On iPhone, you can go to Phone Settings->Privacy->Photos and disable Telegram.
Hiding Your last seen for specific people only
Hiding your last seen is a personal decision that you make for whatsoever reason. It works just as it does on WhatsApp but on Telegram you can block a particular contact from seeing your last seen time instead of subjecting everyone to corporate punishment. User whom you’ve blocked from seeing your last seen will get an approximate last time like “last seen recently, last seen within a week or last seen within a month”.
This option can be found in Telegram’s Settings -> Privacy and Security -> Last Seen. Here, you can set your last seen to be seen by “Everybody”, “Contacts”, “Nobody” and add exceptions for the same.
Self Destructing Secret chats
Telegram’s biggest advantage over any other messenger is its Secret chats feature that brings end-to-end encryption, screenshots disabled and self-destructing capabilites which will ensure your messages disappear completely within the specified time.
This is done by setting a timer, hit the three dot button in a secret chat and tap “Set self-destruct timer”. Then, select the time after which you want the messages to destruct. Once set, the messages you send along with the ones you received will self-destruct in the time set.
(there are no screenshots to demo because you cannot take screenshots)
Telegram Bots and Channels
Bots are Telegram’s hidden gems. There are various bots that let you do various things from playing games, getting GIFs (@gif), stalk youtube stars (@MKBHDbot) and even make payments to buy stuff through Telegram. You can find new bots through the Telegram Bot Store or you can checkout this list that was shared on our forums.
Telegram channels are an easy way to get news, alerts and much more. A great place to get started with Telegram channels, is the Techweez Channel and others here.
Lock your chats
Privacy yeah? To set a passcode lock, go to Telegram’s Settings->Privacy and Security->Passcode Lock and enable it. This will ensure that no one will be able to access your chats without the passcode.
BONUS: Themes
Telegram goes the extra mile to let you tweak the look of the app itself. You can choose between a dark mode, a light mode (default), blue theme or just create one for yourself.
To change the theme, go to settings -> Theme.
