Telegram Stories

Telegram Stories are a fresh, privacy-first take on a popular format, filled with creative media options – allowing anyone to share moments from their life with custom lists of users, see detailed stats and unlock powerful tools.

• Viewing Stories
• Posting Stories
• Privacy Settings
• Stories on Your Profile
• Editing Stories
• Detailed View Statistics
• Premium Features

Viewing Stories

Watching Stories

By default, all stories from your contacts which you are allowed to view appear at the top of your chat list. You can pull down to expand it and scroll through all the stories. To open someone’s story, simply tap their picture.

You can also watch stories from other Telegram users. Any person with an active, viewable story will have a ring around their profile picture – like in the chat list, on their profile, and in member lists in groups.

While watching a story, you can tap on the right and left sides of your screen to skip forward and back – or swipe right and left to see stories from another user.

Hiding Stories

If you wish to hide a specific person's stories from the top of your screen without blocking them or deleting them from your contacts, just tap and hold their story preview and choose ‘Hide Stories’ – hidden stories will be listed in your archive instead.

To revert this action, open your archive, hold their story preview and tap “Unhide Stories”. Note that the chat with the user in question will not be moved to the archive, and they will not know you’ve archived their stories.

Notifications

By default, you will be notified about new stories from 5 contacts that you contact frequently. You can manually toggle notifications on or off for any user by viewing one of their stories, tapping or and selecting ‘Notify About Stories’.

Your notification settings can be completely customized by adding exceptions for individual users or entire groups.

Reactions and Replies

While viewing someone’s story, you can easily react to it by tapping on the heart icon or privately reply from the text field – keep in mind that both of these actions will add you to the list of viewers even if you enabled Stealth Mode.

You can send hundreds of different reactions by holding on the heart icon instead of tapping it.

Posting Stories

Photo and Video

You can tap the [+] button (iOS) or the camera icon (Android) in your chat list to create a story, using a photo or video – either from your gallery or via the in-app camera.

Multiple images from your gallery can be used in one story – open the sticker panel in the editor and tap the photo icon in the bottom corner. There you can also search for images from the web.

When creating a story, you can tap to take a photo, or hold down to record video – all with one hand. While recording, swipe left to lock recording, swipe up to zoom in, or swipe right to switch cameras.

Dual Camera Mode

Telegram Stories allow you to capture a moment from every angle using both the front and rear cameras of your device simultaneously.

Footage from one camera fills the screen, while the other camera is overlaid as a small circle, which can be moved to any position. You can tap the button to choose which camera goes where – even while recording.

Dual Camera Mode is available only on selected devices that are powerful enough to support it.

Media Editor

Stories use Telegram’s powerful media editor – allowing you to correct parameters like brightness, contrast and saturation, or add stickers, GIFs, text and location tags.

You can also add multiple images from your gallery or directly from the web. To do so, open the sticker panel in the editor and tap the photo icon in the bottom left corner – from there, either select an existing image or use the search icon in the top right corner to find new ones online.

Captions

Stories have a separate field just for text – where you can add more context without covering up any of your content. Captions support @mentions and links, so you can tag friends or share websites.

Captions allow up to 200 characters. Premium users unlock 10x longer captions up to 2048 characters.

Privacy Settings

When posting a story, you can select from 4 privacy settings: Everyone, My Contacts, Close Friends and Selected Contacts. Each option can be completely customized, allowing you to include or exclude individual users, as well as entire group chats.

Additionally, you can choose a list of users who will never see your story, regardless of which privacy setting you choose. This way you can make sure certain coworkers or family members won’t accidentally discover your adventurous side.

In the privacy menu, you can also choose whether to prevent or allow screenshots. Disabling ‘Allow Screenshots’ also hides any Telegram UI options that viewers could use to save or share the story.

Expiration Options

Stories last for your choice of 6, 12, 24 or 48 hours. To select how long you’d like your story to last, tap the timer icon at the far side of the Caption field.

Once a story expires, it is moved to your profile by default, unless you chose to disable this option, in which case it will go directly to your story archive.

Currently, the expiration time of a story can’t be edited. However, you can always delete the story and repost it with a longer or shorter option.

Stories on Your Profile

You can choose to post stories to your profile, arranged in a gorgeous grid – where both old contacts and new connections will see your highlight reel for as long as you want.

Each story that you post to your profile has separate privacy settings – so you can always control which ones certain people are able to see.

Stories can be added to or removed from your profile at any time. To add an expired story to your profile, open your Story Archive in Settings > My Stories.

My Stories and Story Archive

After stories expire, they go to your Story Archive, where they can be scrolled through, reposted, added to your profile, or permanently deleted. To access your archive, go to Settings > My Stories > > Show Archive (iOS) or Settings > My Stories > Archive (Android).

Any stories you’ve posted to your profile also appear in Settings > My Stories, where you can view and manage them.

Editing Stories

Editing Content

Any element of your story can be updated at any time – to change its visibility, caption, stickers or other additions without having to delete and repost from scratch.

To edit your story, open it on the device you posted it from and tap / > Edit Story.

Editing Privacy Settings

While your story is active, you can change who is able to see it from any of your devices. Tap to open your story, and then tap the icon in the top-right corner of your story. From there, you can change it to any of the 4 privacy settings: Everyone, My Contacts, Close Friends or Selected Contacts.

Editing Stories On Your Profile

You can view and manage the stories you’ve saved to your profile in Settings > My Stories. There you can tap any story to see its viewer list, change its visibility, or remove it from your profile.

Detailed View Statistics

To see who viewed your story and when, open it from the top of your screen or from your Story Archive in Settings > My Stories and tap on views at the bottom.

By default, this list becomes unavailable 24h after the story expires, however, Telegram Premium subscribers can access it indefinitely.

Note that reactions and the total view count remain available indefinitely for any user.

Advanced filters

Advanced filters become available if enough users viewed your story – to help you navigate long lists with ease.

These filters include a search field that lets you find specific users, as well as separate tabs for all viewers and contacts. If enough users react to your story, you’ll be able to sort the list by either Likes First or New First.

Keep in mind that users who enabled Stealth Mode won’t appear in this list unless they react or reply to your story.

Stealth Mode

When a user opens a story, they appear in a list of viewers that is visible to the story's author. Premium users can enable Stealth Mode – erasing their views from any stories they opened in the past 5 minutes, and hiding what they view for the next 25 minutes.

To enable Stealth Mode, open any story (even your own), tap or and select ‘Stealth Mode’.

Stealth Mode is only available to Telegram Premium subscribers, along with other powerful and exclusive features.

Premium Features

Any Telegram user can view, post and interact with stories. Subscribers of Telegram Premium unlock exclusive features to make the most out of stories:

• Priority Order – Get more views as your stories are displayed first.
• Stealth Mode – Hide the fact that you viewed someone’s story.
• Permanent View History – Check who viewed your stories, even after they expire.
• Custom Expiration Options – Keep your story up for 6, 12 or 48 hours.
• Save Stories to Gallery – Save any unprotected story to your Gallery.
• Better Captions – Unlock 10 times longer captions under your stories, as well as links and custom formatting.
• More Stories – Share up to 100 memorable stories each day.

Like with all Telegram Premium features, this is just the beginning – expect even more powerful functionality with future updates.