Popular chat app Telegram is largely famous for its end to end encryption. That said, it is still a fairly full-featured chat platform, with apps on iOS and Android competing with the likes of Facebook Messenger and LINE, while the desktop version has, according to a few words from the company, replaced email in some enterprise customers’ setups. Today, all platforms are getting updates of some sort.
To dive right into the Android side of things, we get a native, in-app video player. Now, instead of having to go to another app to watch sent videos, they will play in-app. Nifty, but a somewhat basic feature that many apps in Telegram’s wheelhouse already have. In any case, this is the only update Android is getting this round that it’s not sharing with other platforms. Android users, like everybody else, can now view an entire set of group profile pictures all together, and can now make use of a “scroll to bottom” button, which bears a badge showing how many unread messages await on the journey back to the top of the thread. The app will now also save unsent messages as drafts and allow them to follow your account across platforms. A message started on an HTC 10 can be continued on an iPad Air 2 and eventually be sent from the desktop interface, for example. Some slight UI tweaks about wrap it up for Android users this round.
For iOS users, the app now features a fairly complex picture in picture option for videos. Compatible videos, which only includes YouTube and Vimeo links for now, will sport a button in the bottom right corner. Clicking it will put the video into a small, movable window. On iPads, that window will even stick around when changing apps, staying until it is manually dismissed or the device reboots. All platforms, including desktop, have gotten a slight makeover with some new icons and colors. The update with the above listed changes is live in the Play Store for Android users, but there was no word on when or if Android users will be getting their hands on the sweet windowed video feature that iOS users get with today’s update.