Telegram has updated its mobile and desktop apps with a number of small improvements.
Telegram 1.3.13 on desktop gains a new night time theme, options to set notification exceptions, and the long-sought ability to export chat history.
The Telegram Passport feature, an identity broker service, is made more secure in this release thanks to “improved password hashing algorithm” to protect Telegram Passport data.
What is Telegram again?
Often called a WhatsApp alternative, Telegram is a cross-platform, cross-device encrypted messaging service that is tied to your mobile telephone number rather than a traditional login identity.
Features include message sync, group chats, voice calls, emoji and stickers, support for sending messaging attachments including photos, videos and documents, and more.
Telegram provides an official web app, desktop app for Windows, Linux and macOS, and iOS and Android app, and a well-supported API that third-party clients can leverage.
Telegram Chat Export
The latest Telegram builds also let you export Telegram chat, group, and channel history to an HTML or JSON file for parsing and/or posterity. Exports contain text, photos, stickers and other media.
To export Telegram chats from the desktop app just head to Settings > Export Telegram Data, select the items you want to include, and push the export button.
If you only want to export an individual Telegram chat you need to open the conversation, tap the “…” overflow menu, and select the “Export chat history” option.
You can view your “beautifully formatted” exported HTML file(s) with a regular web browser.
Improved theming
The desktop client also adds a new “night theme” that can be set to turn on automatically during evening hours.
Not that you’re limited to the default themes as the messaging client already supports custom themes. With the latest update you can assign custom night and day themes and quickly switch between them.
Notification exceptions
Notification exceptions are a feature that heavy Telegram users will want to make use of.
If you participate in multiple public groups, private groups, subscribe to broadcast channels (like ours) and have plenty of one-on-one chats too, notifications from the service can be overwhelming.
With this update to the mobile and desktop apps you get to create rules on which notifications you see and/or which you don’t.
Just head to Settings > Notifications and enter the usernames of users whose notifications you want to defy global rules.
For example, you may choose to disable all Telegrams notifications but create an exception for you girlfriend or boyfriend so that you do get alerts for their messages. Alternatively, you might enable notifications for everything, but exclude alerts when coming from a specific individual.
Download the Telegram Desktop App
The official Telegram desktop app is available on Windows, macOS and Linux systems. You can download an installer from the official Telegram website:
You’ll find mobile apps (which are required to create a Telegram account) on Google Play, the Apple App Store. A “FLOSS” build is available on F-Droid.
The app is also available (unofficially) from the Ubuntu Snap store as well as on Flathub. These versions may be out of date, or have packaging-specific bugs.
Updated source code for all of Telegram apps is available on GitHub.