REVISED: Sixteen features,
that would make Telegram Messenger even more awesome than it is today.
UPDATE: I created a channel for feature requests in Telegram, you can find it at telegram.me/ideasfortelegram!
Also, a comment-functionality in channels should get implemented soon (well, it already is, but not active yet), so this should be a great way for other users to make suggestions too.
Half a year ago I wrote two articles about (in total) 14 features, that would make Telegram even more awesome.
Today, some of these features are already implemented (like invitation-links to group-chats) while I see others as less important now (like WebRTC-integration).
So here it is: The revised list of sixteen features, that would make Telegram even more awesome than it is today:
1. Seperate channels and bots from chats
With users subscribing to more and more channels and using many bots the chat overview becomes very confusing. I think it would be a good idea to seperate chats from bots and channels.
Swipe to the left — you see all your channels and bots.
Swipe to the right — you are in your chat-overview.
If you scroll down the top bar and the new-message-button disappear and create more space for the content.
2. New channel interface
There is no need for a conversation-like interface in channels since there is no conversation ;-)
Telegram should use the whole available space to display the content (and maybe even make the top- and bottom-bar disappear when you scroll down).
This still allows comments to posts (if they get added in the future).
3. Sync deletion of chats between devices
If you delete a bot or a chat on one of your devices it remains (empty) on the other devices and you have to delete it manually there again.
This is especially annoying if you like to try out many bots and also use the desktop version of Telegram because you need 4 clicks to remove each chat/bot.
4. Embed channels in websites
Newspapers, bloggers etc could show their readers what they post on their Telegram-channel by embedding their channel in their website (similar to how you are able to use facebooks page plugin to embed a facebook-page in your website).
Also, this would be a great way to help Telegram gain users (and show your users that you have an official channel on Telegram).
Add a “add to Telegram”-link which leads to your channel and you’ll get many more followers on your channel.
Also, public channels are already public, so there is no privacy-leak here.
5. More group functionalites
It would be great if it was possible to add multiple administrators to a group and to block users permanently.
Today, if there is a user that is constantly spamming in your group you can remove him, but as long as you don’t change the invite-link the user can always come back again.
6. Add a small bio to your profile
Pavel Durov already said in his channel that this will be coming — great idea.
7. Save music to your music folder
I would love an option to save mp3s to the phones standard music folder, so the music-app you’re using can find them and add them to your library.
If you download mp3s in Telegram today most music-player-apps won’t find them (and Telegram will delete them from your phone after some time and you’ll have to download them again).
Besides: Handling feature requests:
Pavel Durov, Telegram Messenger: Many companies (like Microsoft) use Uservoice to handle feature requests (for example: excel.uservoice.com).
I’d really love it if Telegram would use it too, since blogposts like this don’t always reach the developers and github issues for feature requests just annoy the developers and keep them from building a great product :-)
Ideas can be upvoted and commented on uservoice, I think that would be a great way to involve the Telegram fanbase more and encourage participation (and get some nice ideas).
The following feature-requests did already exist in my last articles:
8. Dual-Sim-Support
Many people (and me) need to use two phone-numbers, maybe because they spend half of their time working in one country, the other half working in another country and want to be reachable for their friends and colleagues in each country with a national number (and don’t want to give two numbers to half of their friends).
Or because they need to have a private phonenumber and one for work.
If you don’t want to carry around two phones (and want to use one of the many dual-sim-phones available), today, the only solution is to install two telegram-clients (like the official one and Plus Messenger).
It would be great to be able to connect two (or more) numbers to one installation of the app (similar to how you connect two mail-accounts to the google mail app on your android phone).
9. Improved image-viewer
Telegram is great to share photos, but especially in immersive-mode it wastes a lot of screen space.
It should automatically zoom in, so that the images fill the screen (also in the normal not-immersive-mode).
Nobody cares about the 10px cut of the images sides if the image is 10% larger than it is now ;-)
10. Easily Accessible Tutorials
Telegram has lots of functionalities and all of them are easy to understand and easy to access — for us, the tech-geeks that we are.
For my mom? Not that much…
Telegram could replace the FAQ-Section in the app with a simple tutorial, about a dozen slides, showing one feature on each slide and a shortcut to the location in the app where you can access the feature.
For example: setting a username, setting a profile picture etc.
There can still be a link to the FAQ-website, but with a well written tutorial, the FAQs won’t be necessary in most cases.
Telegram lives from word-of-mouth-marketing, but it’s hard for people not knowing about Telegram’s unique features to convince their friends to join (they might not even try).
Even for many of my friends Telegram is just like WhatsApp with less contacts but more security (that’s what they’ve heard somewhere) — because they don’t see it’s great features.
11. Maximum of one secret chat per contact
At the moment your are able to create as many secret chats as you want with the same person.
If the other person deleted his chat with you and you want to write him again it is necessary to create a new chat (because you have to exchange keys) — but the apps should combine all secret chats into one secret chat per contact, of course only on the UI-level (to keep it as simple as possible for the users).
12. Cross-device-filesharing
It’s already possible to send files from one of your devices to another one, for example if you want to have your pdf-flight-ticket on your phone (by writing a message to yourself, using your username — or by creating a group with yourself and another user and removing the other user afterwards).
I think it would be great if there was a button in the main menu called “My Files and Notes” which basically leads to a chat with yourself but without the strange write-yourself-UI, without your own picture and name in the top bar (instead just a “My Files and Notes”-label) and maybe with a more dropbox-like interface. This would also show the users that this useful functionality exists and keep your chat-list cleaner.
I think this would not require any server-side changes and could be easily done within the apps.
13. Support for URI schemes
Edit: already supported (thanks Serge Ostrowsky)
14. Filenames on Android
Name downloaded files properly (at the moment, you are not able to find a certain file in “Telegram Documents”).
I understand, that this is because several files can have the same name and Telegram wouldn’t know which ones you downloaded. Maybe it’s a solution to name the files in a combination of both ways, like “Katy_Perry_-_Fireworks_4546541845.mp3”
15. UI: Delete a chat
When you delete a chat, there is no way to see which chat you‘re going to delete.
You could have selected the wrong one and delete it by mistake (with no way to restore it).
The selected chat should be coloured (or it should say “delete chat with John Doe”).
16. Add users by username
One of my most favourite features of Telegram are usernames. But at the moment, there is no way to add a user to your contacts if you don’t have his phonenumber (of course you can write him, but you can not add him to your contacts).
Bonus-Feature: Polls
I call this a bonus-feature, because Threema already did implement it and it is incredibly useful (if it wasn’t Threema).
Many conversations on instant messengers are about finding a place to eat, a time to meet etc. It would be great to find a result without everybody having to write several times, conversations get really confusing by that.
There is already a Poll-Bot, but I would like a native solution.
More suggestions? You can reach me at @featurerequests on Telegram.
