Telegram May Change Free Tagline to Indicate Arrival of Premium Service, Suggests Codes

A Telegram Premium subscription plan could be on the way soon and the subscription is expected to give users the access to unlock premium stickers and exclusive reaction emojis. Users downloading the app are currently seeing the tagline—“Telegram will be free forever. No ads. No fees”. However, this could change shortly. In the latest update, code for an upcoming version of the Telegram app has been spotted online with a different tagline dropping the free slogan. The new strings indicate that the company is testing another way for the app to gain revenue.

Noted developer Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) on Twitter suggested that Telegram is changing the initial tagline of the app to launch its paid version soon. The new data strings shared by the developer include a new tagline “Telegram provides free unlimited cloud storage for chats and media.” The screenshot also suggests that there are plans to show ads. The Telegram Premium subscription is expected to unlock additional stickers as well.

The new tagline is not active on the messaging app yet. It will probably only be activated once the premium subscription is officially announced.

Telegram recently rolled out its version 8.7.2 beta for iOS that included new reaction emojis and stickers. These new stickers and emojis are said to be premium features available only for Telegram Premium users. All users will reportedly receive a prompt asking them if they want to sign up for the Telegram Premium subscription plan when viewing these reactions or stickers on the instant messaging app. The company, however, has not shared much information about the pricing and the exact availability of the Telegram Premium service yet.

In April this year, the company had added several new features to the app including custom notification tones, setting custom durations for muting chats or auto-deleting messages, and improved forwarding that preserves replies. It also introduced an updated picture-in-picture mode for Android users, while message translation got improvements on iOS.