Setting your messages to ‘auto delete’ is great because it kills two birds with one stone: your various apps and social networks don’t get clogged with conversations that don’t matter anymore, and you don’t have to worry about the privacy concerns that involve leaving your messages forever. I especially love Telegram’s new approach to automatically delete old messages: the app can now automatically delete entire conversations for both partiesSorry, folks looking in old chats to catch you saying something you said months ago.
To get started with this always-useful feature, make sure you are updated to the latest version of Telegram for Android or iOS, then start the app and start a conversation. On Android, tap the three-dot icon and select “Clear history,” and choose your duration.
On iOS, long press a message in the group chat. You will see an option to “select” that message. Tap it and then tap “Clear Chat” in the top left corner. You will then get this prompt:
Tap Enable auto-delete and you can select whether messages in chat should disappear for all members after a day or a week.
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Whatever you choose, on whatever platform, your group chat will automatically notify everyone that messages are now automatically deleted. Be prepared for the ensuing onslaught of answers.
That is it. I recommend enabling this because honestly, how often do you ever go back to check out old messages? If you think you should refer to something, you can still take a screenshot before the message disappears.
How to Create Time-limited Telegram Invitation Links
Speaking of privacy, Telegram’s update also adds new expiring invites to the mix. This feature means you can send invitations to your various groups and channels without having to worry about those links, giving anyone who finds them access to your chats forever.
To get started (on iOS, at least), pull up a group or channel, tap the icon in the top right corner and tap Add membersTap Invite to group via linkthen tap Manage invitation linksTap Create a new link, and then you can limit the number of times people use that link based on a time period (an hour to a week), the expiration date, or the number of users (and usage).
While I would love if the feature came with the option to kick people out after a certain period of inactivity (kind of like Discord’s temporary server invitations), Telegram’s updates still provide incredibly useful resources to get you more comprehensive. manage chats.