Telegram's update lets you customize alert sounds, mute chats and do things with bots. Photo: Telegram
The Telegram Messenger app released a new update this week for iPhone and iPad that lets you set customize sounds for notifications, mute chats and enjoy a few other enhancements.
One of the best Twitter features is the mute. You can pick any keyword, hashtag or person, and shut them up for as long as you like. This works in various Twitter apps, but if you’re using the official Twitter app, you can mute these keywords just by long-pressing them.
Twitter is a swamp of spoilers. You can’t move for tweets about the plot of the new Star Wars movie or spoilers about whatever new TV show is dropping all its new episodes this week. There are two ways to avoid spoilers. One is to avoid Twitter entirely.
The other is to mute keywords, so you don’t see references to — well, references to whatever you want. Mutes don’t have to be about the long-awaited meeting between Spock and Obi-Wan, though. You can mute anything. You could avoid all mentions of President Donald Trump, for example. Brits could stanch the flow of Brexit mentions. Or you might temporarily mute mentions of a sports event if it’s taking over your timeline.
You won't have to listen to music you don't like. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Spotify will soon let you mute artists you don’t want to listen to.
It is currently testing a “don’t play this artist” feature in the latest version of its iOS app. Using it will prevent the artist’s tracks from playing altogether — even if they feature in a playlist, chart list, or on a radio station you listen to.
Now you can mute people on Instagram, just like this creepy doll. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Instagram finally lets you mute people, letting you remove their pictures from your timeline. If you’re too cowardly to just unfollow someone (like they’d even notice anyway), or your best friend just got their first dog/baby, and has flooded their Instagram with “cute” photos, you can now block these photos and videos without ditching the person responsible for them. Let’s see how to mute Instagram.
We don’t want to see photos from everyone we follow. Photo: Lee Peterson/Cult of Mac
Instagram is finally giving us the ability to mute accounts that we don’t want to see in our feeds.
The feature lets you weed out annoying friends without actually unfollowing them. You will still be able to view their profile if you choose to, and you can unmute them anytime you want.
Have you ever had your regular (important) iMessages swamped by a flurry of notifications for that inane group conversations about matcha-flavored KitKats? Or maybe you want to keep your iPad’s notifications switched on, but you want to mute iMessages from your boss until Monday, because she has no concept of boundaries?
If so, you need iMessage’s handy conversation-muting feature. It’s so easy to use that you may have turned it on by mistake. If you’re no longer getting alerts for certain messages, you may want to check this, too.
Facebook has added a new snooze button that lets you mute annoying friends, groups, and pages.
The feature lets you temporarily avoid content you don’t want to see — without having to unfriend or unfollow. No more baby pictures, Black Friday deals, or royal engagement stories.
Twitter's new notification options. Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac
Twitter’s latest update gives users more control over the notifications they receive. It’s now easier than ever to block pesky alerts while still receiving those you want to see.
Some Facebook users now have a second News Feed. Photo: Facebook
Facebook is making big changes to the way it approaches video. Videos in the Facebook News Feed previously played silently unless users turned sound on. Now if you want to keep the sound off, you’ll need to dig through your Facebook settings.
Turn off the annoying new feature with these steps.