This year, Telegram received 10+ updates bringing new features to the messaging service, including the new search filters, anonymous admins for groups, and more. Now, it has launched a new group voice chats feature — somewhat similar to Discord rooms — through its 12th update. With this, users can participate in ongoing, always-on, group voice chats on Telegram and can join/leave anytime they want. The good thing is that when you’ve joined a group voice chat, you can simultaneously do other things such as send texts or multimedia on the app.
According to the official Telegram blog post, the Voice Chats in Telegram groups are not group calls, but they can achieve similar goals. The new Telegram update will now allow any group to become a voice chat room. Note that this feature earlier appeared in a recent beta update too, but, Telegram has now officially rolled it out for the stable version.
Telegram Group Voice Chats Features
The new voice chats for Telegram groups will allow thousands of group members to participate in an always-on voice chat. This feature is now a part of existing text chats and will run parallel to the ongoing text/multimedia-based communication. It is just that users will be able to speak live with their friends and family through a persistent group voice call. Also, it provides a user the flexibility to join or leave the group voice chat anytime he/she wishes to. This is like you join a group of your friends for a quick chat at the back of your classroom and come back when you want.
A group with an active voice chat will show a special bar at the top with a Join button, which you can tap to participate in the voice chat with just a tap. Besides the Join button, this bar shows profile pictures of current participants in the voice chat and displays who is speaking at the moment. Android users with the Telegram app will have a system-wide floating widget that shows who’s currently talking and display microphone controls — even when the app is running in the background. It also provides a menu that allows group voice chat members to invite more people.
New Animations and SD Card Support
Apart from the group voice chats feature, Telegram has also updated the animated stickers for its Android app. Additionally, iOS users can now enable Siri to read new messages aloud in the headphones. Further, the update brings a new and more powerful image editor. As per Telegram, the stickers now come with unlimited resolution but with a size less than 50kB. This makes the animated stickers now load faster than ever. Also, users on the Android app can now move their app data to an external SD card if they want to free up their space.
According to the company, Voice Chats are available for all Telegram platforms — Android, iOS, and the Web — and can accommodate a few thousand participants. To start a voice chat, group admins can tap the menu icon and select Start Voice Chat.
