The new Telegram update allows you to create animated stickers from videos

Little by little, Telegram continues to build its ecosystem to remain one of the preferred alternatives to WhatsApp. Although Facebook’s (now Meta) messaging service still has a much larger user base, Telegram has more features and much more robust cross-platform support.

The company has announced a new update where a new video sticker system has been added. Telegram had already had this type of animation for some time. However, unlike stickers where any user could easily create them by sending 512 pixel wide PNG images to a specific bot (@stickers), video stickers required specific design skills in Adobe Illustrator.

Animated stickers can now be generated from videos.

With the new video stickers system, the Stickers bot can automatically create an animated sticker from any video. To do this, the video must be in .webm format with VP9 encoding. Other limitations are a maximum of 512 pixels, a maximum duration of 3 seconds, and a capsize of 256 KB. They cannot have integrated audio since it would not make sense.

Another novelty of this update is the inclusion of five new reactions, a system of small animated emoticons associated with messages from users or channels. Also added is a method for navigating between recent chats and the inevitable list of bug fixes, including improved call quality, quick-view page translation, or muted messages.

The new version of Telegram is now available for both mobile and desktop devices and is gradually being integrated into the web versions.