Telegram introduces live stream feature with latest update

Messaging platform Telegram has introduced a live streams feature with its latest version 8.0 update.

Users on the platform can now access the live stream feature with unlimited viewers for groups and channels.

“The live stream feature supports unlimited viewers along with allowing them to raise hand and join broadcast,” Telegram explained in an official post.

The Group Video Calls feature that was added in earlier updates is a good tool for live broadcasts and has now been enhanced with the support for unlimited viewers, it said.

The update also includes other new features such options to remove captions from media and hide sender names when forwarding, easy switch to unread channel without going back to chat list, an improved sticker panel along with new animated emoji.

Users can now preview and edit how a message will look before forwarding and have other customisation options. They can hide the sender’s name or hide captions on media messages, deselect messages that they don’t want to send and even change the recipient if they tapped the wrong chat.

Separately, they will now also have the flexibility of scrolling through the channels followed without getting back to the chat list.

“If the chat list has been organised with Folders or Archived Chats, the app will follow the structure set up by users: channels in the current folder, then within each folder, then those left in All Chats and the Archive. Users can now simply open a channel from one folder to read them all without getting distracted by the chats of other folder,” it explained.

Similar to chats, with the latest update, when users open a comment thread that has new messages, a counter will now appear showing the number of unread comments.

The improved sticker panel includes options such as ‘Trending Stickers’ about the recently used stickers. Users can save a pack for future.

The app has larger previews for sticker suggestions. Users can enter one emoji in the input field to get suggestions and further pull upward on the suggestions panel to see more suggested stickers. The new update also now shows ‘choosing a sticker’ status at the top of the chat to indicate if the respondent is replying or not. The Hindu BusinessLine