Setting your messages to “automatic deletion” is great, because it kills two birds with one stone: your various apps and social networks won’t be clogged with conversations that don’t matter anymore, and you won’t have to worry about the privacy issues that arise when you leave your messages around forever. I especially love Telegram’s new approach to automatically deleting old messages: the app can now automatically delete entire conversations for both parties. People search through old chats to discover something you said months ago.
To start with this always useful feature, be sure to update to the latest version of Telegram to Android or iOS, then launch the app and start a conversation. On Android, tap the three dots icon, select “Clean history,” and choose its duration.
On iOS, press and hold any group chat message. You will see an option to “Select” that message. Touch it and “Clear chat” in the upper left corner. You will receive this prompt:
Touch Enable automatic deletion and you can select whether chat messages should disappear for all members after a day or a week.
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Regardless of what you choose, on any platform, your group chat will automatically inform everyone that messages will be deleted automatically. Be prepared for the onslaught of responses that will follow.
That’s it. I recommend enabling this because, honestly, how often do you go back and look at old messages? If you think you need to refer to something, you can still take a screenshot before the message ends.
How to create time-limited Telegram invitation links
Speaking of privacy, the Telegram update also adds new expired invitations to the mix. This feature means that you can send invitations to your various groups and channels without worrying about these links, giving anyone who finds them access to your chats forever.
To get started (on iOS, at least), open a group or channel, touch its icon in the upper right corner and touch Add members. Touch Invite to the group via linkand then tap Manage invitation links. Touch Create a new link, and you can limit how many times people use that link over a period of time (one hour to a week), expiration date or number of users (and uses).
Although I would love it if the feature came with the option to kick people out after a certain period of inactivity (such as Discord’s temporary server invitations), Telegram updates still provide incredibly useful ways to manage your most extensive chats.