You can set a profile picture for one of your contacts that only you see. Their own picture is unchanged for everybody else, and they are not told.
It sounds like a novelty and it is genuinely useful, because a contact with no picture or an unrecognisable one is a contact you will misidentify in a list.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Give a contact a picture that only you see.
- check_circle Make your chat list recognisable at a glance.
- check_circle Remove it and go back to their own.
- check_circle Tell this apart from the two similar features.
Set from their profile, and it applies only in your copy of Telegram.
person A note to yourself, in picture form
Half the value of an avatar is recognition: you find a chat by its picture faster than by reading names. A contact with no picture, or one that is a landscape, or three colleagues whose pictures are all the same company logo, defeats that entirely.
Setting a local photograph fixes it for you without asking anybody to change anything. An actual photograph of the person, or a screenshot of something that identifies them, and the chat list becomes scannable again.
It is private in both directions: they are not notified, they cannot see it, and it does not travel to anybody else. Removing it restores their own picture immediately.
Three similar features, and which is which
They are easy to confuse and they do quite different things.
visibility_off A local override
send Asking them to use one
public The one strangers see
rule Worth doing for
A local photo fixes your recognition problem. Suggesting one asks them to fix theirs.
settings Setting one
- Open the contact's profile Then edit it.
- Choose to set a photo for that contact It is the local option, not the suggestion.
- Pick something recognisable at avatar size A face, filling the frame.
- Rename them too if the name is ambiguous The same screen.
- Check your chat list The improvement is immediate and permanent.
- Remove it any time Their own picture returns.
This page changes what you see. The curriculum step is what others see of you: profile privacy, who your picture is shown to, how contacts differ from strangers, and what a profile reveals before anybody has spoken to you.
At a glance
- 1Private contact photo
Set a photo for a contact that only you see.
- 2Recognise chats
Helpful for contacts without a clear photo.
- 3Different features
Suggesting a photo asks them; setting one is private.
Updated
