Telegram is such an underrated messaging app and is one of my favourite Android apps not only for its focus on privacy but also other features that make it stand out as a popular chat app.
It has a ton of features such as 2GB max file limit, Scheduled Messages, Profile Videos, softening skin option on media editor, improved People Nearby section, Mini Thumbnails, Filtering New Chats From Non-Contacts, Group Stats, Android extras (revamped music player, improved message input bar, cropping and rotating videos), multiple accounts on Telegram Desktop and More Animated Emojis.
Telegram has quiz mode on polls for you to create trivia questions. They have a sticker directory to browse and search the over 20,000 stickers on the app. The app has a new attachment menu on Android which makes it easier to use. They also have new improvements for the macOS app where you can access shared media from the redesigned profile pages.
Third-party Telegram apps like Plus Messenger take that whole experience to another level. If you liked Telegram, then you’ll love Plus Messenger.
In April this year, Telegram reached 400 million users. It took them roughly two years to double their daily users. The company says that 1.5 million users signed up every day so they will probably be more than 500 million users by the end of the year.
Saved Messages
This is a life saver if you use Telegram.
Saved Messages is one my favourite features of Telegram. It serves as a bookmark, literally.
This feature serves as your personal cloud storage for any messages or media you may want to send or forward there.
The good thing is that Telegram will always display the Saved Messages first at the top of the list in the sharing and forwarding menus making it easy to save your favourites while keeping things as tidy as before.
Back to my first point. I use my Saved Messages feature to literally bookmark links to read later. There’s a couple of bookmark apps to use – heck even Twitter has this feature.
As an endlessly curious person, I am extremely online and I come across a lot of interesting articles to read and I quickly share those links to Telegram to check out later when I’m chilling.
This brings me to another feature I have come to love.
PS: Saved Messages feature is so good that people want another tab.
You can create a private channel and save your messages here. You can give these private channels titles to keep everything organized.
Instant View
Instant View is a nice feature Telegram has that allows its users to view articles from around the Web in a consistent way, with zero loading time.
Most articles I share on Saved Messages will load on Instant View which I can read even when I’m offline – especially long reads.
If you load a link, the articles will look like this which makes it easier to read when you’re not on an internet connection.
Telegram says that Instant View pages are extremely lightweight and are cached on their servers, so they load instantly on pretty much any connection — hence the name.
Another thing worth noting is that most news channels I follow on Telegram such as The Atlantic, Verge, New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Medium, Vox, Washington Post and NPR have Instant View for the articles they share.
One more thing is that I have an IFTTT applet that I have configured that sends links I have liked or when a specific Twitter handle posts a tweet on Twitter to Telegram and some of them(links)will show up as Instant View articles.
Conclusion
If you haven’t been using these two Telegram features, you better get started. I’ve been enjoying them since I joined the app. I get to catch up on long reads that I have missed on especially on weekends when I go offline while I binge-listen to my favourite podcasts.
