Telegram finally lets you video call with an entire group of friends

Telegram’s update factory picked up steam earlier this year after WhatsApp came up with its revised privacy policy. Another update rolled out of the update factory Saturday night, this time with group video calling, as well as an update to chat animations and support for animated backgrounds.

Video calls on Telegram

Video calling in Telegram has been limited to one-on-one conversations until now. If you wanted to call multiple colleagues, friends or family members, you had to use another app like ‘Zoom’ or Meet. An update to Telegram’s voice chats removes that limitation, Telegram says in its blog post about the feature. After opening a voice chat in a group, people can click the camera icon to turn on their camera.

Telegram says that the voice chat feature currently allows unlimited users, but that “video is currently only available to the first 30 people.” If more than 30 people join the video call, they can only switch on their microphone. Telegram says it will increase that number soon so that more voice chat participants can turn on their cameras. When this will happen and how many users will then be able to turn on their camera is still unknown.

In addition to the option of video calling with groups of up to 30 people, Telegram lets you share your screen with others. This works on phones, tablets and computers. On phones and tablets – both Android and iOS – the entire screen becomes visible to others. Windows and MacOS users can select a specific screen, Telegram reports. A final change in voice chats is that Telegram has improved the noise reduction and that you can now manually switch the function on and off.

New Telegram Animations

In the Telegram update, the chat service also offers new animation functions. For example, Telegram now offers a choice of different animated backgrounds, so that you do not have to look at static backgrounds. One can choose from backgrounds with colors that rotate according to a specific pattern. Colors and patterns can be set by the user. If you are very happy with your wallpaper, you can even share it with others. While moving wallpapers often require a lot of computing power, Telegram states that this is not the case with its animated wallpaper.

In addition to animated backgrounds, Telegram also made changes to the animations of messages being sent in this update. From now on, messages will move smoothly from the text editor to the message list. This applies to text as well as emoji, stickers and media. In the current Telegram version, text messages and media flow smoothly to the list only if you own an iOS device. On Android, only stickers and emoji slide smoothly to the message list at the moment.

Rollout Telegram update

Telegram is currently rolling out the new features to all chat service users. For this you will have to download the Telegram update from the Play Store, with version number 7.8.0. Did you already receive the Telegram update? Be sure to let us know in the comments at the bottom of the article.