Telegram wants to become a full-fledged video player as it adds a host of new features in its latest update related to video streaming. The new update includes video streaming enhancements such as faster loading, better quality and new speed controls – plus chat-specific hashtags, revenue sharing for bot developers and much more.
An X post by Telegram’s official account confirms that Telegram wants to become a full-fledged video player. The app recently announced a new update that adds a slew of new features, such as faster video loading and better quality. For videos newly uploaded to large channels, the video player now automatically selects a quality level based on your connection to save your data and load videos faster. Users can also manually select their preferred quality level—high, Medium, or Low.
On iOS, one can now swipe up on the video player while a video is playing to enable Picture-in-Picture mode. Then, large channel owners can afford to post better-quality videos, as they will no longer need to pre-process their videos for the best viewing experience. That’s because Telegram will now optimise each uploaded video for them and compress it in several qualities. Users on weaker connections will automatically get more compressed videos, while those with high-speed internet can enjoy the full resolution.
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Telegram also borrowed a feature from YouTube. Users can now hold down on the right side of a video to activate 2x speed and slide right gradually to increase the speed to up to 2.5x. They can release their finger to return to normal speed.
While these were the video streaming enhancements added in the latest Telegram update, there are some other additions, too. For instance, users can now quickly edit a message to add media in just two taps rather than deleting it and starting over. Edited messages now show a timestamp, displaying when the message was last edited. If a message has been edited more than once, it will show the time of the most recent edit.
Chat-specific hashtags, Telegram ads in bots, exact reaction counters, and an increased message limit for bots are other enhancements introduced in the update.