The popular secure messaging app, Telegram, is rolling out a video-calling service on iOS. The feature is live on Telegram 6.3 Beta and can be installed directly from the App Store using TestFlight.
Do note that Telegram is yet to announce the rollout of the feature officially. However, multiple users on Twitter seem to suggest that the feature has gone live in the iOS beta app. There’s currently no word on when it will start rolling out on Android.
As mentioned, only iOS users can apparently access the video-calling feature for now. To try it out, you first need to access the ‘Debug’ menu within the Telegram app. You can open it by tapping the ‘Settings’ gear in the bottom navigation bar 10 times in quick succession. Thereafter, turn on the ‘Experimental Feature’ toggle as shown in the GIF below. Once you’ve done that, you will see a new ‘Video Call’ button within every chat window in Telegram.
According to Twitter user @ave_katerina, the feature only works for two people for now and both will need to enable it using the aforementioned steps. This means users will not be able to make group video calls just yet. However, given that the feature itself is finally available on the app, it should be only a matter of time before group-calling is also part of the package.
❗️Video calls via #Telegram at this moment only work for two people with this Experimental Feature enabled.
— Рина Поличенкова (@ave_katerina) June 23, 2020
Telegram is one of the most popular secure messaging apps in the world with more than 400 million users. Generally speaking, it is also among the most feature-packed, although, the lack of a video-calling option was a sore point among users. That is something that the company is now seemingly trying to fix with the latest update. Let’s hope the company adds group-calling functionality into the mix sooner rather than later.
