The social networking app has upped its game with the newest line of features integrated into the app. First appeared in December, Telegram has now launched voice chat 2.0 with unlimited participation in channels and groups. Yes, you heard that right! With no limits on the number of participants starting today, Telegram has decided to bring tough competition for other voice-only platforms.
The recent update includes recordable voice chats, rich lists of participants, raise hand mechanics, invite links for speakers and listeners, voice chat titles, and a way for public figures to join voice chats as their channels. Some of the features are explained in detail below.
Raise Hand
With all our meetings happening mostly online, it can get a little messy when it comes to discipline. Remember the days when we had to raise our hand when we wanted to ask or speak something? In voice chat 2.0, you can relive these old days by raising your hand virtually and alert the admins when you want to speak. Also, your bio text will also be visible in the list of participants, a space you can utilize to share a little bit about yourself, or your interests, etc.
Recorded Chats
With this, admins can record audio from voice chats to save talks that are worth preserving for those who missed the live event. These recorded chats can later be published by the admin for the followers. To save yourself from any unpleasant surprises, a red light next to their title will signify when chats are being recorded. These audio files will be instantly available in your “Saved messages”
Limitless Telegram Voice Chats
Claimed by the app as “reinventing public radio for the 21st century”, this feature lets the admins of channels and groups host voice chats for millions of live listeners. People can simply tune in to your talk and listen, much like a radio channel.
Speaker and Listener Links
A different link for both speakers and listeners so that you don’t have to unmute important guests when they join. This feature allows the admins of public groups and channels to create separate links that open the voice chats instantly. The voice chats will also have optional titles visible to users so that they see the topic of conversation before entering.
Join As
This feature is especially for the known ones, celebrities, and public figures who’d like to keep their profile low-key when joining a voice chat. When entering a voice chat in a channel, the user can join either with their personal account or appear as one of their channels. This will ensure that unnecessary attention is not drawn to their personal accounts.
Apart from those mentioned above, there are more exciting features such as resuming playback for long voice messages to pick up where you left off; in case you choose the wrong chat by mistake while forwarding messages, click on the X button before sending them to cancel forwarding or choose a different chat.
Lastly, for Android, users can now choose which action is assigned to swiping left in the chat list: archiving chats, pinning, muting, deleting, or marking them as read – features that were already existing for iOS.