Top 11 Telegram Tips and Tricks to Use Like a Pro

Telegram is a popular messaging app with new users flocking to the platform every day. Since there are so many first time users, we thought it a good idea to cover some interesting and cool Telegram tips and tricks for you guys and girls. This will make your stay in the messaging app more manageable and easier.

Telegram offers groups and channels, bots to automate tasks and retrieve information and assign roles to users. Let’s take a closer look at Telegram to find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Let’s start.

1. Auto Delete Account

Let’s start with a security feature, as most people switching from WhatsApp to Telegram do so for security and privacy reasons. You can set your Telegram account to be automatically deleted if you are away for a certain period of time. You no longer have to worry about what will happen when you die.

Go to Settings > Privacy & Security and tap If away to select the duration. Especially if you do not use Telegram much, you can choose a period of 6 months. Otherwise, it may be deleted because you are less active when inactive, which we don’t want to happen.

2. Silent or Scheduled Messages

If you don’t want to be overwhelmed with notifications, Telegram gives you control over them. You can send a silent message to your contact if you don’t want to disturb them. The recipient will receive the message, but will not be notified of it; no sound or vibration.

Compose your message and press and hold the Send button for a few seconds instead of tapping it. This will reveal a hidden menu where you can schedule a message or Send Silent.

3. Slow Mode

Telegram groups and channels can host up to 200,000 users. An active group/channel will have hundreds of messages every day, making it difficult to keep track of who said how quickly. Fortunately, Admins have the option to enable Slow Mode, which requires members to wait a certain amount of time before sending another message.

Open the group and tap on Edit > Permissions and select the duration at the bottom of the page.

This will reduce spam as members will now give some thought before hitting the Submit button and use one message to say it all, rather than splitting it into 2-3 messages.

4. Find People/Groups by Location

This opens the world to you wherever you go. Enabling the Nearby feature allows you to discover new groups and find new people living nearby. Note that these users and groups must also have this feature enabled.

You will find the option under the People tab. Grant location permissions when prompted and you’re ready to make new friends and find great new local bands.

5. Rescue Bots

Telegram has all kinds of bots you can use to get things done, set reminders, manage large groups and channels, and get information from the web. You can use bots in personal chats, groups and channels.

6. Hashtags

You probably use #hashtags on social media sites like Twitter and Instagram to search and filter topics. The same concept works here as well. Easy. To find all posts using a particular hashtag, tap the search bar and enter a hashtag followed by a keyword. This is an excellent way to filter messages and organize conversations.

Once you’ve entered the hashtag, it’s easy to narrow down the search results by usernames and date ranges.

7. Chat Folders

Another great Telegram trick. Are you too active on Telegram for your own sake? Too many groups and active chat threads? Telegram now lets you organize these chats into folders using tags. It works like the Gmail labels we use to sort through emails and make sense of the upcoming landslide.

Open Settings > Chat Folders to create your first folder. Some common categories would be home, office, NSFW, and hobby.

8. Edit Sent Messages

You can not only delete sent messages, but also edit them. We’ve all made mistakes when texting, trying to get our thoughts across with our thumbs. Interestingly, the editing feature can be used for up to 2 days, which is more than enough.

Long press the message you want to edit and select the Edit button.

9. Delete Messages on Both Ends

Other messaging apps like WhatsApp allow users to delete messages they’ve sent (called Unsent), which is great. Telegram wants to do better by allowing users to delete messages sent by others as well. This only works in one-on-one chats, but on the plus side you can delete any message regardless of how old it is.

Press and hold the message to reveal a menu where you will see the Delete button. Selecting this will display two options. ‘Delete for me’ and ‘Delete for me and Username’. Both options are self-explanatory and only work in one-on-one chats.

10. Share GIFs and YouTube Videos

You can instantly find and share GIFs and YouTube videos in groups and channels. To find videos from YouTube, simply type the keyword @vid.

Similarly, you can search for GIFs by typing the ‘@gif keyword’. These are the bots we mentioned above but the beauty here is that you don’t need to add these two bots before using them. These are universal bots that work all over Telegram, such as groups, channels, and single chat rooms.

11. Copy Part of the Message

Someone sent you a message and you want to copy part of it, but you can’t. This is a common problem in most messaging apps where you have to copy the entire message, paste it into another app, then edit and re-copy whatever you need.

Telegram solves this problem. Long press the message to reveal a menu where you can also view the message at the top. Long press the message again and you will see a selection menu with two bars to partially select the text message. It just works and saves a lot of time.

Join the Bandwagon

Telegram is full of useful features to help you in ways you didn’t know were possible. And they keep adding even more as new users discover the joys of using this great messaging app. So what is your favorite Telegram number? Share it with us in the comments section below.

Next: An in-depth look at WhatsApp’s new feature called Disappearing Messages and how it performs against Telegram’s Secret Chat. Find out everything you need to know about these features in both messaging apps.