Telegram X: October Update & Contest Round 2

Brief overview of recent updates to Telegram X for Android, including information about the second code contest.

Reactions

This summer Telegram X became fully open source, with a focus on providing convenience tools for security researchers, APK verification and accessible transparency of the source code changes.

With source code made open, the $25,000 contest for reactions implementation was held. This update includes the winner's work, which introduces reactions.

Reactions in private chat in flat mode. The same reactions layout can be used in all other chats by disabling Big Reactions option described below.

Minimised reactions mode

It's possible to adjust how reactions are displayed in chats and channels separately. If you prefer minimalistic mode, it's possible to use the same mode currently used in private chats by default in all chats.

You may find this option in Settings — Interface — Big Reactions

Quick reactions

If you are an advanced user and like gestures, you may find Quick Reactions setting handy:

Swipe and pull to quickly leave a reaction:

Select up to 4 reactions that will be available with gestures, or disable them completely if you do not like gestures:

Improved notification reliability

Telegram X relies on Firebase for notifications to work properly when app is closed: Telegram server transfers encrypted notifications via Firebase Cloud Messaging (without exposing the content to Firebase) and Telegram X processes them to show notifications.

Recently users from certain regions started experiencing problems connecting to it — most likely due to local censorship experiments, — which caused a noticeable regression in notifications reliability for some users.

This update comes with internal notifications reliability improvements and makes previously invisible errors clear to users when such problems occur.

One of new screens you will encounter when there's a problem Firebase Cloud Messaging. Note that when you see it it doesn't mean something has broken in Telegram X — it means in previous Telegram X version problem was there too, it was just invisible.

Other Changes

Rendering of messages with custom emoji in all places of the app
Preview of video stickers and animated emoji in notifications
Improved performance while typing a message — noticeable on low-end devices
60 FPS playback of Animated Stickers
Improved playback of GIFs & Animated Stickers on screens with dynamic refresh rate
Better text length limit check in all places of the app, which allows using more symbols in bios and text messages in certain languages
Fully reworked service messages that support custom emoji, spoilers and follow the Settings — Themes and Chats — Text Size setting
Improved WYSIWYG entity editor logic and added Plain Text option
Toggle Approve New Members on Manage Group screen
Optimised media loading in Instant Views
Supported files over 2GB
Copy link of removed link preview in Recent Actions
Hint when user doesn't accept voice and video messages
Improved stability by fixing over 50 issues

And three contributions submitted to the Telegram X repository:

Reset password during two step verification without access to the recovery email: #193
Delete specific sticker from recent stickers: #194
Removed a limit that prevented favoriting stickers when less than 5 sticker sets were installed: #195

You may find all changes in the source code including comprehensive list of changes here.

Contest Round 2

This month we hold a $20,000 Android Contest for three features: Comments + Message Threads, Send As and Improved Search.

Anyone can participate by submitting a pull request to Telegram X repository by October 30th, 23:59 Dubai Time that implements at least one of them.

Even if you are a beginner mobile developer, contests are a good way to gain experience and improve your skills. We highly recommend participating Android developers of any level: if it won't be enough to win this time, it may improve your skill level for winning in any potential future contests and reward programs.

Read more.