Important: Telegram Settings

Almost everyone simply installs Telegram and starts using it. You join groups and channels and soon all you see are messages popping up everywhere, so you mute or archive them, often randomly.

This is because you actually have to spend a few minutes making some changes in Telegram settings, to make it work for you.

Too many people, accustomed to Facebook and Twitter, don't realize that Telegram is different: instead of deciding for you what you see and don't, as part of controlling information overload, Telegram leaves is all up to you.

There are 4 main things that you need to change (notifications, archives, folders, and pinning) and we'll show you each one by one in the steps below.

First, however, go to your Telegram settings, and check all the settings relating to Privacy and also data storage. You will know what settings are right for you, do it first.

Privacy

The privacy settings determine who can see your phone number, your profile picture, add you to groups, etc. It is very important to do this first, as per your choices.

Have you done that? If no, do it first, if yes, take the next step:

Notifications

It is very important that you do receive notifications in a manner that suits you and for each type of event in Telegram that is appropriate to you. For example, you will not want the phone making a noise and popping up notifications in busy groups, but you will want it to do so for your family and friends, and less busy groups or channels that are important to you.

Firstly, make sure your phone or device notification settings for Telegram are appropriate for you, for those important notifications: the others we will configure in Telegram settings. So, if you want to get an alert and/or a pop up, when important Telegram messages arrive, they won't be able to do so if your device main settings don't allow for notifications. You may have switched them off in desperation.

For now, switch them on, so that you can fine tune this, as per the below.

Have a look at your chat list in Telegram: swipe down to see archives. Have a look what is in archives, and remove anything that does not need to be in there, so that it, for now, appears back in your main channel list. This will make all the steps below easier.

Next, look at all the chats in that list: are there busy ones that you don't want to be notified every minute there is a new message? Long press on the chat in the list, and mute. If you want to mute only for a certain time, go into the chat, tap on the title of the chat at the top, and the tap on the Mute button: you get options for how long you want to mute this chat.

Repeat this for each of those chats that you don't want notifications for. Instead, you'll see a grey bubble of how many unread posts there are, but not be notified.

Make sure that those that you DO want to get notifications for, are not showing grey, but blue numbers of unread posts.

Archives

If you did not do this earlier, swipe down and tap into Archived chats. Swipe left on any chats that you want to appear in your visible non-archived chat list.

Go back to your main chat list. Look at each chat in the list one by one and decide: do I want to see this chat in the main list (we will set up special lists next), or, is this a chat I only ever want to see when I make a conscious choice to go there? If the latter, it can go into Archived chats. But keep in mind, that whatever you put into Archive won't ever be seen at all unless you look in archives. So generally, you should not do this for chats that you go to often, or want to see in the list but not get notifications for.

For example, instead of leaving a chat or group that you may have a need for in future, you just Archive it. You can always unarchive, or change anything again later.

Pinning

In your main chat list (we will set up folders last) you can pin up to 5 chats that will always stay at the top of your list. Your Saved Messages chat, and any close family or friends that you need to contact quickly in an emergency, or often, but are otherwise going to show somewhere down the list because they are not sending messages every few minutes, should be pinned.

At this point, it is important to note that the chats that show in your main list, and indeed in any list, which are not pinned, show in the order of last message received. This is a big part of the problem: those busy generally useless chats with thousands of people spamming non-stop, will always appear at the top of your chat list!

This is why you archive those types of chats, so that this does not happen, and also this is why you PIN the chats most important to you, so they always appear at the top.

To pin an important chat long press on it and select Pin. Note that you can also do this within archives, so that archived chats that are not busy but important, or that you want to appear at the top, will appear at the top of the archived chat list.

Folders

An often overlooked and important tool in having a helpful tab layout of your chats so they appear in different lists, not only in the one main big list, is "folders". In actual fact, while they are called folders, they are really tabs.

This will allow you to separate those chats that are from your contacts, from those that are non contacts, and to have, if you wish, a tab for unread chats, for channels and/or groups, and any other tab you wish, e.g. "important" chats.

To set this up, go to the "Folders" option in the Telegram settings, and follow the steps there.

When you are doing all the above steps, do not worry, any changes you make can always be changed again later at any time.

Doing the above four things, and not only your Privacy settings, will make your life on telegram a lot easier:

• Less distractions
• Less stress
• More productivity
• See what you should see
• See less of what you don't want

If you appreciated this advice, please join our news channel, where we actually mute most posts unless they are important, so you don't have to mute the channel by default.

Click here https://t.me/TruthCast and then click join.