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If you’re a particularly private person and troubled by news reports regarding online security and privacy breaches, you should absolutely consider using Telegram with secret chats enabled. You will have largely the same experience as with more popular messaging apps, with greater peace of mind. Ultimately though, using Telegram doesn’t necessarily mean your messages are more private or secure than when using WhatsApp or other messaging apps. Server-side data leaks can still happen, and no amount of encryption will help if your end device is already compromised. This feature allows you to filter out and put personal chats, channels, groups, contacts in different and customized folders. You can customize folders the way you want, plus there are some additional features. For example, you can have all chats with unread messages automatically added to a folder.

Faster and Stronger To do this, head over to Telegram settings and choose ‘Folders’. Here you can create as many folders as you want and add both personal chats as well as groups and channels to any of the folders. You can also order the folders you just created, but note that the default ‘All chats’ folder will always be the first one. Read also: WhatsApp vs Telegram vs Signal: Which messaging app should you use? You’ll have to be especially concerned with privacy to want to do this — it means you’ll never have a chat log — nonetheless, it’s a nice option that Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat don’t have.

If you don’t want to go through the hassle of customizing your own theme and still want to theme your Telegram, you can do that too. To do that, tap on the search icon and search for the word Themes. In the results, tap on Android Themes Channel. The channel houses the list of all the themes that people create and share. Just scroll to find the one you like. Once you find a theme that you like, tap on the download icon. Once it’s downloaded, tap on it again and then tap on the Apply button. Telegram has a personal ‘Saved Messages’ space for each user. This is accessible from the left hamburger menu on the main screen. Users can save important messages here which will be backed up on Telegram’s secure cloud just like your chats. The Saved Messages space can then be accessed across you’re your phone, laptop and any other device where your account is logged in. Another security feature that adds usability is usernames. Instead of giving people your phone number, you can simply give them your username. This gives you better control over what information is out there, and how people can contact you in the future. “Keep-Alive Service” ensures that you don’t miss any important notifications. It keeps the messaging app running in the background for reliable and up-to-date notifications. This is useful for people who use ‘Cleaner’ apps and frequently delete system cache and junk files.

As mentioned above, the use of usernames instead of phone numbers means your account isn’t tied to just one phone. This makes it easier to log in on other devices, allows you to have multiple accounts on the same device, and makes it so you don’t have to share your phone number with someone to add them as a contact in Telegram. To save a message from elsewhere in Telegram, tap it, choose Forward, and select Saved Messages to add it instantly. You can also paste text, links, images, and anything else you'd like from other sources.