Telegram brings updates and new features regularly but this one is pretty big, at least for those who have been waiting for this for some time. Group video calls is now finally available on the messaging platform and it comes with screen sharing and support for tablet and desktop as well. The other big addition to this update, albeit on a smaller scale, is to bring animated backgrounds to your chats for the first time and it will not bog down your app and your phone’s battery. Plus there are other smaller new things that are also coming to the app.
To start a group video call, you need to start a group voice call first and then you need to tap the camera icon to turn it into a video session. The slightly bad news is that they are currently limited to just 30 people even though group voice calls do not have a limit to the number of participants. But they will also increase this limit on group video calls later on. There is also support for screen sharing and you can actually also share it with your camera feed at the same time.
Since tablets and desktops are sometimes better for times like these, there’s also support for group video calls. You can tap to open the side panel if you want a split-screen view of the video grid and list of participants. But either way, it’s optimized for portrait and landscape views. You can open voice chats on desktop on another window and it also has selective screen sharing. For voice chats, there are also noise suppression options that you can toggle on and off.
Telegram now supports animated backgrounds which shows spinning color patterns every time you send a message. You can also create your own background by choosing the colors and patterns in the settings. You also get an improved message sending animation as the text, emoji, and stickers now glide upwards from the text box into the chat. There are also login info reminders, bot menu button to browse and send commands, and even more animated stickers.
There are of course a lot of group video calling apps that you can use, but if you and your friends use Instagram a lot, then this would be a more convenient way for you to hang out digitally. Update your app to the latest version to enjoy these new features.
