Telegram may not be the most secure messenger, but it’s one of the most feature-rich and convenient platforms out there. It’s packed to the brim with quality-of-life enhancements, and it doesn’t look like the developers behind the app are looking to stop adding new things any time soon. The latest Telegram beta for Android, version 8.4, has brought some anticipated features like spoiler text styling and emoji reactions.

Both reactions and spoilers have been part of the iOS beta for a while now, but back then, we didn’t have imagery and videos showcasing the features on Android. That’s a thing of the past, and as expected, reactions and spoilers look almost exactly the same across iOS and Android.

When you’re chatting, you can long-press and highlight the text you’re about to send and hit a new “spoiler” styling option in the menu that will obfuscate your writing until your recipients or you tap it. This works both for full messages and individual words or sections.

As for reactions, you’ll get a selection of 11 emoji to choose from to react to a message. They’re available when you tap the speech bubble you’ve received or sent (yes, you can react to your own messages). The available emoji consist of thumbs up, thumbs down, heart, laughter, party popper, fire, shock, all the way to pile of poop and vomit. Individuals can only choose to react with one of these — any new reaction from a person overrides the one they selected before.

Another neat addition to the beta is a snowy winter background, with snowflakes slowly falling down. You could argue that it’s coming a little late given that Christmas has come and gone (at least in most parts of the world), but hey, snow will be a dominating part of everyday life for a few months to come.

Before you go out trying all these features on your friends, keep in mind that everyone needs to use the beta to enjoy them. Reactions can only be seen by those using version 8.4, and spoiler-styled text will show up as regular text for everyone using the stable release. You’ll either have to convince your friends to download the beta or wait for a bit until Telegram releases version 8.4 in stable.

The Telegram Beta isn’t available on the Play Store. Instead, you’ll have to download it from the company’s repository over at Microsoft App Center, which it uses for distributing upcoming versions of its apps. The advantage is that you can leave the stable version of Telegram on your phone intact as the Telegram Beta installs as a separate application.

Thanks: Nick