Today is the day we get another major Telegram update, as the app has now reached version 7.4. In its announcement, the team behind Telegram states that the messaging service has welcomed over 100 million new users just this month, and with that, it"s introducing a big new feature for newcomers - the ability to import chat history from other apps.
Services such as WhatsApp, Line, and KakaoTalk, which allows users to export their chats, will now see Telegram as a target for the export, which all add the entire chat history to the app. Telegram only mentions those three apps by name, but it"s possible that others will work similarly.
To export your WhatsApp chats on iOS, you"ll need to open the contact or group information page for the chat you want to export, then scroll down to Export Chat, then choose Telegram from the Share menu. On Android, you can open the chat, tap the three-dot icon, then choose More, and finally Export chat. Once you"ve imported a chat, you can also save space on your phone by cleaning your storage, since chats are backed up in the cloud.
Telegram is also bringing added privacy controls to the app. About two years ago, it added the ability to delete messages for all members of a conversation without a trace, and now, it"s also possible to delete secret chats, entire groups, and call logs for all the users involved.
The recently-added voice chats are also getting improvements, starting with the ability to see active voice chats from the call history page. You can also now fine-tune the volume for each participant in a voice chat, with group admins being able to control the experience for all listeners.
Another area getting updates is the audio player. Tapping the name of an artist for a song you"re listening to will now bring up all the tracks by that artist across all of your chats. Additionally, the Next and Previous buttons can now be used to rewind or fast-forward a song by pressing and holding. Finally, there"s a new fade effect when pausing and resuming playback.
Other updates include a new greeting sticker suggestion when messaging someone for the first time, an array of new animations on the Android version of the app, and a new button to report fake channels or groups impersonating people or organizations. Some accessibility improvements have also been made for TalkBack and VoiceOver users.