Live Streams, Flexible Forwarding, Jump to Next Channel, Trending Stickers and More

Telegram was launched just over 8 years ago and today we are continuing our tradition of monthly updates with version 8.0. This update brings live streams with unlimited viewers to groups and channels, options to remove captions from media and hide sender names when forwarding, an easy way to jump to the next unread channel without going back to your chat list, an improved sticker panel, new animated emoji and more.

Unlimited Live Streams

Our previous update made Group Video Calls a powerful tool for live broadcasts — and now their audience is unlimited (except by the popularity of your channel, or the population of Earth, whichever is more relevant in your case).

Start a Live Stream in a channel or a Video Chat in a group – both now support unlimited viewers. The power to run your own TV station is here, right in your pocket.

To begin, tap 'Video Chat' (in Groups) or 'Live Stream' (in Channels) on the profile page of a community where you are an admin.

The viewers of your Live Stream can also raise their hand and join your broadcast if you allow them to speak.

Flexible Forwarding

Forwarding has become a much more relaxing experience. Tap the 'Forward Message' label above the message bar to open a preview window, showing how the messages will look when they are sent – along with several customization options.

You can choose to hide the sender's name or hide captions on media messages. You can also deselect messages you don't want to send or change the recipient if you tapped the wrong chat.

Jump to Next Channel

There are millions of one-to-many channels on Telegram that users follow for news, events, and content.

To keep up with the news easily, you can now scroll through the channels you follow without going back to your chat list. When you reach the bottom of a channel, pull up to go to the next unread channel.

If you have organized your chat list with Folders or Archived Chats, the app will follow the structure you have set up: channels in the current folder, then within each folder, then those left in All Chats and the Archive. Simply open a channel from your Studies folder to read them all without getting distracted by Memes — and vice versa.

Trending Stickers

Thanks to an open platform and thousands of free, high-quality stickers in the sticker directory, there's a perfect sticker for every situation. This update makes it easier to find the one.

Trending Stickers are now shown above ‘Recently Used’ in your sticker panel. Tap 'Add' to save a pack for the future — the trending sticker section is one of the few things in this world that gets updated more often than the Telegram apps.

When you scroll through your packs at the top of the panel, the thumbnails expand and show the names of your sticker packs.

Telegram for Android also got larger previews for sticker suggestions. To get suggestions, enter one emoji in the input field. To see more suggested stickers, pull upward on the suggestions panel.

If you have a particular thing in mind and don't have it among your sets, type a word in the search field to find matches from the sticker directory. Try 'yellow', 'animal', 'dog', etc.

Choosing a Sticker

Similar to 'typing…' or 'recording a voice message', the apps now show a 'choosing a sticker' status at the top of the chat — so you know that your chat partner is still there, just looking for the perfect animated response.

Unread Comment Counters

Many channels have comments enabled for their posts so that subscribers can interact and share their thoughts. We've recently had a great chance to test this with thousands of birthday wishes — thank you all for your support.

Just like with chats, when you open a comment thread that has new messages, a counter will now appear showing the number of unread comments.

New Animated Emoji

This month we asked ourselves: “Should we stop animating more and more emoji with each update?” After a heated discussion we arrived at this answer: “Probably not.” Send a message with a single emoji to get one of these new masterpieces in a chat:

That's it for today — and we already have some cool stuff in development for the next update. See you there!

August 31, 2021
The Telegram Team