Telegram Update Adds Clubhouse-like Voice Chat 2.0, New Gestures, and More

Mar. 20, 2021

Telegram is rolling out anew updateto its messaging app with improvements to voice chats, the option to cancel when forwarding messages, and new swipe gestures on Android. Here’s all you need to know about the new features added to Telegram in the latest update.

After addingvoice chats for groups in December, Telegram has brought the feature to channels in this update. The company has been testing the feature over the past few weeks and you can check out our guide oncreating voice chats in Telegram channelsfor step-by-step instructions. You can also go through our guide onusing voice chats in Telegram groupsin case you missed it.

Telegram saysyou can host voice chats for millions of live listenersthrough this feature. You can start a voice chat if you’re an admin of a channel or group. To do so, open the group or channel, and choose Start Voice Chat.

Admins can also record the chats, say if you want to share it with others, reupload the clip as a podcast, or something similar. Chats that are being recorded will include a red indicator. You’ll find the recorded clip in your Saved Messages.

Participants can join as speakers or listeners. You can tap on the ‘raise hand to talk’ button to request speaking permissions, much like Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces, andother apps like Clubhouse.

If you accidentally chose the wrong chat while forwarding a message, you now have an option to cancel the forward or select another chat. You can tap on the ‘X’ button in the chat forwarding UI in Telegram to access it.

Apart from these, Telegram has added new swipe left gestures for archiving, pinning, muting, deleting, or marking chats as read on Android. Further, you can now resume playback of voice messages from where you left off. This Telegram update is currently rolling out and you can grab it from theGoogle Play StoreandiOS App Store.

Subin writes about consumer tech, software, and security. He secretly misses the headphone jack while pretending he’s better off with the wireless freedom.