Speaking of exciting new features, Telegram 5.0 for iOS and Android has them by the bucketload, according to the latest Telegram blog. After reiterating their sacred pledge to keep our data safe yada, yada, yada, we finally get the juicy part. Keep in mind that the operational word here is privacy, privacy and well…emojis! Here, let’s break it down for you:

Unsend Anything (Yes, really)

Until recently, it’s been possible to delete (unsend) messages and whatever else sent in error (Or if you changed your mind). However, this feature was only active for up to 48 hours from the time you sent the message. Well now, you can delete any chat you sent and RECEIVED from both ends in a private chat. On top of this, you can take a time machine and delete everything from the very beginning of your correspondence, at any time you wish. All this without leaving a trace. Yes, you heard me! You can just up and nuke everything and none will be the wiser. Once you do this, your chat will disappear on both your device and also that of the person with whom you were chatting. You can choose to do it now, tomorrow, 3 months or a year from now, it won’t matter. All it takes is two taps and then Kaboom! As far as features are concerned, this is rather epic, if you ask me.

Anonymous Forwarding

You know how it is when you forward a message, it feels more like O, that Boov in Home who sends an invitation to everybody in the known galaxy to come check out your source? Well yeah. Apparently Telegram noticed it too. Well now, you can enable a setting which will restrict who can forward your messages, while leaving a trail. Once enabled, your forwarded messages will only display an unclickable name in the ‘from’ field. This way, you can keep your sources private. You can change this setting by heading is over to ‘Forwarded messages’ in ‘Privacy and Security settings’. Try it out yourself and see how it looks. It personally totally works for me.

Limit who can view your profile photos

For those who didn’t realise, Telegram actually supports multiple profile pictures. You can have a whole gallery in there. The thought that strangers can be all up in your candid photos looking at you would make some people uncomfortable. Telegram now lets you restrict who can view your photos. The same way you can set who can see your online status, you can choose who among your contacts can see what you put up there.

Telegram has also pimped up the Emoji/Sticker and GIF search function. Sticker packs now have icons to better aid in choosing the right one. You can also use certain keywords in various languages to find emojis. What’s more, when you send an emoji without any accompanying text, the emoji will appear larger than has been the case. However, this feature is as of now only available on Android. iOS guys will have a wait a little while for the same. As for GIFs and video messages, the large ones will now be streamed to reduce the waiting time before you can view them. This way you can view your GIFs and video messages without having to wait for them to download.

Other features

Some other features worth noting include Settings Search which helps you quickly find the settings you are looking for without having to look too hard. Telegram has also added support for accessibility features i.e Talkback (Android) and VoiceOver (iOS). These accessibility features return spoken feedback so that you can use Telegram without having to look at the screen.