Custom Animated Emoji, Gifting Telegram Premium, and More

Last month, Telegram passed 700 million active users and introduced Telegram Premium that lets anyone support the development of Telegram and get access to exclusive additional features.

Today's update brings custom animated emoji in messages and captions, the ability to give Telegram Premium as a gift, a new privacy setting for voice messages – and more.

Custom Emoji Packs

Telegram Premium users get access to 10 custom emoji packs, each containing dozens of emoji with unique characters, up to a total of more than 500 Premium emoji – and countless more coming.

When you start typing a message, the Sticker button will turn into an Emoji button that opens the redesigned emoji panel – so you can quickly browse your emoji packs or add new ones.

All users – Premium or not – can see any animated emoji. Everyone can also use all custom emoji for free in their Saved Messages chat to try them out – or to add extra flair to notes and reminders.

All packs are included in emoji suggestions – type a shortcut like :smile or :lol and you'll see results from your entire library. Typing a static emoji will also show suggestions from all of your animated packs.

The new emoji are an open platform – anyone can upload custom packs with unique art styles and characters.

Interactive Custom Emoji

Many popular custom emoji are also interactive when sent in 1-on-1 chats – any user can tap to play synchronized, full-screen effects.

Try it with common emotions like and more – like .

New Sticker, GIF and Emoji Panel on iOS

The sticker panel has a new look on iOS, with separate tabs for stickers, GIFs and emoji – just like on the Android, desktop and web apps.

On all apps, the GIF section now has thousands of high-quality GIFs from your favorite movies and shows – thanks to submissions from our recent contest.

Privacy Settings for Voice Messages

Premium users have a new setting that allows them to control who is able to send them voice and video messages – like Everyone, My Contacts, or Nobody.

Like other privacy settings, this also supports exceptions, so you can choose specific people or groups of users that can Never or Always send you voice messages.

If someone on your Always list chooses a bad time for verbal communication, you can convert their voice message to text.

To modify this setting, go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Voice Messages.

Gifting Telegram Premium

You can now share the Telegram Premium experience with friends, family and coworkers by sending them a prepaid subscription for 3, 6 or 12 months – at a discount.

Open a user's profile and tap or and choose Gift Premium. The gifted subscription will instantly arrive as a special message in your chat with that user – containing an animated gift box.

If you're using one of Telegram's desktop apps, or downloaded your Android app directly from our website, you can use bots like @PremiumBot to subscribe to Telegram Premium or give it as a gift.

The FAQ now has a dedicated section for Telegram Premium – where you can learn how to manage your subscription, what features it offers and why it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy.

More Interactive Emoji

Making new interactive emoji with full-screen effects is a good tradition and today we're adding . Send one of these into any 1-on-1 chat to get a big animated emoji that displays an effect when you tap it:

These emoji are also available as reactions – currently exclusive to Premium subscribers, but they will be unlocked for all users soon.

Any user can increase the counters for exclusive reactions that were already added to a message by Premium subscribers.

And that's all for today. Enjoy the rest of the Summer while we're back down in our dungeons – where it's always cool and the next update is already taking shape.

August 12, 2022
The Telegram Team