Telegram’s latest update pushes the messenger deeper onto your wrist, into group moderation, and a little further into the hands of bots. The headline additions are full apps for Apple Watch and Wear OS, richer text formatting for bots, AI-powered moderation tools for groups, Markdown file viewing, and more control over the built-in browser.
The smartwatch move is the most visible one. Telegram now has dedicated apps for Apple Watch and Google Wear OS that can handle chats and media, plus text and voice messages. That puts it in a small club of messengers willing to treat wearables as more than glorified notification mirrors, even if the first versions are still clearly a work in progress.
Telegram on Apple Watch and Wear OS
Telegram says the Apple Watch version will soon gain notification muting, pinned chats, and message deletion. Wear OS is due to get location previews and sticker sending. Huawei smartwatch support is not ruled out either, which sounds like Telegram hedging politely while keeping the door open to every platform with a pulse.
That wearable push matters because rivals have spent years trimming mobile friction rather than adding brand-new devices. Telegram is doing both at once, which is very on-brand: a little useful, a little chaotic, and always aimed at users who want more control than a standard chat app usually offers.
Bots can now format text like real editors
Bots also get a much larger toolbox. Telegram now lets them use the full range of text formatting, including tables, quotes, task lists, and image insertion. Message limits for bots rise to 32,768 characters, although text longer than about 8,000 characters is truncated and gets a ”Show more” button.
- Bots can use tables, quotes, task lists, and images.
- Bot messages can reach 32,768 characters.
- Longer text is shortened after about 8,000 characters with a ”Show more” button.
AI moderation and browser changes
Groups are getting AI moderators that can punish users for unacceptable posts and handle join requests through mini-app interfaces, including pre-join tests. That is a practical response to the familiar mess of spam, raids, and bad-faith behavior that has made large group chats a moderation headache for years.
There are smaller but still useful additions too: polls can now include links for each option, and the built-in browser can open .MD files. Telegram also added whitelist and blacklist controls for browser behavior, letting approved sites open only inside Telegram or blocked sites only in an external browser. The company says browsing history in the in-app browser is not saved.
The direction is obvious. Telegram is turning more of its messenger into a platform, not just a chat app, and that usually means one thing next: more power for admins, more automation for communities, and a few more reasons for competitors to copy the parts that actually work.