Telegram has seen some major growth since the most recent privacy kerfuffles over on Facebook, mostly because of the service's staunch support for user privacy. In line with this, v5.5 (and v1.6.2 for desktop) adds some new features aimed at giving people more control over how they use Telegram. This amounts to an unlimited unsend feature for private chats and anonymous forwarding, as well as some other quality of life things.
As always, here's the Play Store changelog:
- Delete any message on both ends in any private chat, anytime.
- New privacy settings for message forwarding and profile pictures.
- Redesigned panel for Emoji, GIFs and Stickers with new search.
- Emoji suggestions for the first word you type in a message.
- Streaming support for GIFs and video messages.
- Search in Settings.
- TalkBack support.
- Improved call quality.
While the new features are rather minimal, what's there is still important. The first thing that caught my eye was the unlimited unsend feature, but it's exclusive to private chats. It allows you to take back any message you've sent or even ones that you've received, or you can just wipe out the whole chat altogether with a couple of taps. There is no time limit on this feature.
Message forwarding is interesting, letting you cross-quote what somebody said in another chat or channel into a different one. Now, you have the option to make it so that forwards don't link back to your account, something I turned on immediately after updating. Other users will see an unclickable name, meaning that, as Telegram puts it, "people you chat with will have no verifiable proof you ever sent them anything."
Finally, we're getting some other quality of life improvements like search in settings, a better emoji and gif panel, and list of related emojis as you type. And on Android, Telegram 5.5 adds full TalkBack support, allowing you to navigate the app without seeing the screen — a great accessibility option to help more people use the service.
This update should be live in the Play Store, but we have it over on APK Mirror if you'd rather go that route. If you use Telegram on desktop, v1.6.2 adds a very similar feature set as we see here in Android version, which is nice to see.
Source: Telegram