Telegram is rolling out its Stories feature to Premium users, the company confirmed in a tweet on Friday. The official rollout for Premium users comes a month after Telegram CEO Pavel Durov announced that the messaging app would be adding Stories in July. It’s currently unknown when Telegram plans to launch Stories for non-Premium users.
At the time, Durov said users had been asking for the feature for years, noting that more than half of all feature requests that Telegram receives are related to Stories. The company was initially against adding Stories because they “are already everywhere,” but wanted to listen to its users, Durov had said.
With Stories on Telegram, you can decide who can see each of your stories. You can choose to have your Stories viewable by everyone, your contacts, a few selected contacts or a list of close friends. Stories will be placed in an expandable section at the top of your chat list. You can hide Stories posted by any contact by moving them to the “Hidden” list in your Contacts section instead of the main screen.
In addition, you can add captions and links to your Stories. There’s also the option to tag other people in your Stories. Plus, you will be able to post photos and videos taken with the front and rear cameras simultaneously in a BeReal-like style.
You can choose when your story expires. For instance, you can have it expire in six, 12, 24 or 48 hours. Or, you can permanently display Stories on your profile page in a way that’s similar to how Instagram lets you display Story highlights.
Durov previously said that following internal tests of Stories, even the skeptics on the Telegram team started to appreciate the feature and that Telegram can no longer imagine the messaging service without it.