Telegram added the ability to import your WhatsApp chat history, which means that you will not miss previous conversations if you want to switch between messaging services. On iOS, the feature arrived with version 7.4, released yesterday and identified by 9to5Mac, but the update still doesn’t appear to be active on Android. Along with WhatsApp, Line and KakaoTalk chat histories can also be imported, according to Telegram’s changelog. We note that you can import WhatsApp chats to the latest version (7.4.1) of Telegram and continue the conversation, as long as each WhatsApp user has a Telegram account.
The addition of the feature occurs while Telegram is reporting a huge increase in the number of users, with the service now having more than 500 million active users worldwide. The cause appears to be WhatsApp’s new privacy policy, which raised concerns about the privacy of Facebook’s proprietary messaging app (WhatsApp later delayed the introduction of the new policy and insists that it will not affect the security of consumer chats. or profile data). For users who are jumping from WhatsApp to Telegram, being able to take their chat history with them means one less barrier to switching.
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The import process works on a chat-by-chat basis, but it seems to work for individual and group conversations, at least with WhatsApp. To import a chat from the Facebook messaging service, open the relevant conversation and touch the name of the group or contact at the top of the chat to open its information screen. From there, the option “Export Chat” opens the iOS Sharing Sheet, where you will see the option to select Telegram. Then, just choose a Telegram chat to import the messages into.
All messages imported into chats have a small “Imported” label, indicating when they were originally sent and when they were brought to Telegram, and the messages are visible to all participants in the chat. You have the option to import WhatsApp chat history with or without your images. Imported messages appear in the order in which they were imported, not in the order in which they were originally sent.
Telegram support for imported chat history comes along with a handful of other quality of life improvements for messaging, such as being able to adjust volumes for individual voice chat participants or reporting “groups or fake channels ”that are trying to impersonate famous people or organizations.