Profile Videos, 2 GB File Sharing, Group Stats, Improved People Nearby and More

Today's update brings Profile Videos along with improved People Nearby features, unlimited file sharing with up to 2 Gigabytes per file, mini-thumbnails for your chat list and notifications, group stats, and much more.

Profile Videos

You can now upload a video to your profile – and choose any frame you like for your static profile picture in chats. Capture yourself in action, or wink and wave at people like you're in a magical picture from Harry Potter.

Same as with any videos you upload, our media editor will help you enhance quality – or decorate yourself with animated stickers.

As your mood changes, you can quickly switch back to a previous profile photo or video by tapping ‘Set as Main’. Great for rewinding time and staying young forever.

Soften Skin

Speaking of the media editor, any photo or video you take with the front-facing camera now has a soften skin option in the media editor. But you don't need it to look fabulous, you already are fabulous.

Improved People Nearby

Profile videos make meeting new people a dozen times more interesting, and we've beefed up the People Nearby section for the occasion.

When people contact you via the People Nearby section, you will see how far away they are. And when you start a chat with someone nearby, Telegram will suggest a greeting sticker to break the ice. Luckily, all our stickers are extroverts.

Now that people are carefully emerging into this brave new world, it's time to make friends and repopulate the earth compare your sticker collections. Head over to Contacts > Find People Nearby and try tapping on ’Make myself visible’.

Mini-thumbnails

Ever wondered whether the incoming picture is just another meme or that selfie you've been waiting for? Get an idea of what media is in a message right away thanks to the new chat list thumbnails.

The new thumbnails also appear in notifications and message search results. Never lose a cat photo again.

Speaking of previews, you can hold on a profile picture in the chat list to preview messages without opening the chat. This feature is from 2018, but we had a dream in which a talking squid told us to mention it here.

Filter New Chats from Non-Contacts

Thanks to People Nearby and groups with up to 200,000 members, you can always find someone to chat with. Public figures sometimes have the opposite problem and may wish to tone down the attention they receive — we've got this covered too.

If you're getting too many messages from non-contacts, try the new switch in Privacy & Security settings to automatically archive and mute new chats from people not in your contacts. You can access these chats anytime from the Archive folder and bring them back to the main chat list in a tap.

Group Stats

Owners of large groups with over 500 members can now view beautiful, detailed graphs about their activity and growth. Group stats also show a list of top members by number of messages and average message length.

By the way, the minimum number of subscribers to get Channel Stats has been reduced to 500 as well. We're planning to roll out access to group stats for admins of all groups with 100 members or more in the near future.

Android Extras

On Android, the music player has been redesigned with sleek new icons and an expandable track list. Tap the button on the left to control looping, shuffling and to reverse the track order so your playlist can moonwalk with you.

The message input bar will grow smoothly as you type a long message. And the video editor now allows cropping and rotating videos – to help you hide any evidence you were filming vertically.

Multiple Accounts on Telegram Desktop

Telegram lets you stay signed in on 3 accounts from different phone numbers without logging out. Our mobile users have been enjoying this feature since 2017, and today it's coming to the multi-platform Telegram Desktop.

As always, this doesn't require an active connection to your phone – all our apps are completely self-sufficient.

More Animated Emoji

Our animated emoji army keeps growing (note to self: build a bigger barracks). To get one of these in a chat, simply send a message with a single emoji – and watch it jump to life.

Be careful, one of them bites. And we're not allowed to tell you which one.

If you're looking for something more interactive, try sending a single in any chat to see if you score a goal:

And One More Thing

Since 2014, Telegram users have been sharing files up to 1,5 GB each, which happens to be 93 times larger than 16 MB (which is a totally random number, we have no idea what it could possibly mean).

From now on, you can send unlimited numbers of media and files of any kind – up to 2 GB each.

And that‘s it for today. We're now in the middle of the year — with eight major updates behind us and long-awaited features just around the corner. Stay tuned!

July 26, 2020
The Telegram Team