Telegram has announced updates for its mini-apps, introducing features such as full-screen mode, home screen icons, geolocation access, and ten additional functionalities.
Full-Screen Mode
Mini-apps can now utilize the entire screen in both portrait and landscape orientations, allowing for expanded gestures and interfaces that accommodate a wider range of game genres.
Device Motion Tracking
Mini-apps can access device motion data to incorporate unique control elements into games or develop virtual reality (VR) experiences.
Home Screen Shortcuts
Users can now place direct shortcuts to specific mini-apps on their device’s home screen, enabling one-tap access to favorite games and services.
Geolocation Access
Users have the option to share their location with mini-apps, empowering developers to create location-based games with points of interest or interactive maps for events. Access to location data is disabled by default; users must grant specific permissions to each mini-app they wish to share this information with.
Gifts from Apps
Apps can now use their stars to send gifts celebrating achievements. A new privacy setting allows users to control who can send gifts that appear on their profile.
Emoji Statuses from Apps
With this update, Telegram Premium users can set emoji statuses directly from within mini-apps, indicating activities such as playing a game or being in a taxi. Mini-apps can integrate APIs from other services to update a user’s emoji status when they start activities like listening to music, reading a book, or watching a movie.
Media Sharing
Users can now share media directly from mini-apps, sending referral codes, custom memes, and more to any chat. Mini-apps can also create media for users to post to their stories.
Creating Documents
Mini-apps have the capability to generate documents and files for download, such as AI-generated profile pictures or audio files.
Subscription Plans
Developers can offer subscriptions within their mini-apps using Telegram Stars, monetizing their efforts with multiple tiers of content and features. Telegram Stars earned from digital products and subscriptions can be used to increase message limits for the app or claim rewards.
Loading Screen Customization
Developers can further customize the loading screen of their mini-apps by adding their own icons and specific colors that will be displayed before the app starts loading.
Device Hardware Information
To better optimize graphics and enhance performance, mini-apps can access basic hardware information about the device, such as processing power and memory capacity, allowing for automatic adjustment of settings to provide a smoother experience.
These updates aim to enhance user experience and provide developers with more tools to create engaging and interactive mini-apps within the Telegram platform.