▼ V I R T U A L I S M

On Android, simply slide out the left menu and choose New Secret Chat to start a new one. On iPhone, open a chat, tap the contact's name at the top, choose More, and then hit Start Secret Chat. Launch the Telegram app on your device and navigate to Settings -> Data and Storage. On Android, tap the three-dot Menu button in the top-right of any Telegram chat and choose Mute notifications. On iOS, tap the contact or group name at the top of the screen and choose Mute. Then you can choose to mute the chat for various periods of time, or forever.

Telegram’s core functionality is the same as most other messaging apps: You can message other Telegram users, create group conversations, call contacts, make video calls, and send files and stickers. However, there are a few specific features that make it work differently from other chat apps. You can choose to share either your current or your live location. Send My Current Location will provide a one-time update about where you are. As you can see in the below image, the app lets you manually change this before sending, so don't trust locations blindly. In addition to manually selecting a point on the map, you can choose a nearby place from a list. Users on macOS now have a quick way to generate a custom profile picture – choose any sticker or animated emoji as the focus, and add a colorful gradient background. You can set one for your own profile, or as a group or channel photo – making it easy to create a themed icon for chats without searching for stock photos. The platform offers three kinds of polls:

Clear Telegram Cache and Local Database Premium Animated Profile Pictures Today is an important day in the history of Telegram – marking not only a new milestone, but also the beginning of Telegram's sustainable monetization. We believe that Telegram's development should be driven primarily by its users, not advertisers. This way our users will always remain our main priority. While we are going to release more exciting features for Premium subscribers, we will keep implementing free features available for everyone, and do it faster than any other massively popular app. This update is no exception – it adds join requests for public groups, an animated screen for external sharing, improved bot descriptions, and more.

Another useful feature is “send without sound”. It is rather self-explanatory: you can message friends freely when you know they are attending an important meeting, studying, or sleeping. Recipients will get a notification as usual, but their device won’t make sound, even if it is in general mode. Telegram is a multi-platform messaging service founded by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, although it was temporarily banned in Russia and has no affiliation with any government or company. It first rolled out on iOS and Android in late 2013, and now has an estimated 550 million monthly users. Telegram’s user base tends to increase whenever a privacy scandal hits one of its larger competitors.