In this article
Tap the microphone icon once and it becomes a camera. Hold it and you record a round video message: a minute at most, always a circle, sent the moment you let go.
They sit between a voice message and a video call — more personal than text, less demanding than asking somebody to be free at the same time as you. The controls are the same gestures as voice, with one extra.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Switch between voice and video without leaving the message box.
- check_circle Lock the recording so you are not holding the phone still with a thumb.
- check_circle Cancel a bad take before anyone sees it.
- check_circle Watch one while carrying on with something else.
Recording starts as soon as you hold the button, so the first second is always you deciding to start. Lock it first if that matters.
videocam The four gestures
Everything happens on one button. Tap the microphone to turn it into a camera, and tap again to turn it back — Telegram remembers which you last used. Hold to record. Slide up to lock, so the phone can be propped somewhere and you can use both hands. Slide left to throw the recording away without sending it.
While recording, tapping the circle flips between the front and back camera, so you can start talking and then show what you are talking about without stopping.
The format is fixed: a circle, at most sixty seconds, no caption. That is a constraint rather than a limitation — a round video is for a moment, and anything that needs a caption probably wanted to be an ordinary video.
Round video, voice, or typed
They cost the recipient different amounts of attention, and that is the whole basis for choosing.
| Round video | Voice message | Typed | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best at | A face, or a thing you are pointing the camera at | Tone, and talking when your hands are busy | Anything precise, and anything anyone will need again |
| What it asks of the other person | Eyes on a screen, sound on, and their full attention for its whole length | Listening, but they can do it while walking, and speed it up | A few seconds of reading, at whatever moment suits them |
| Findable a month later | No. Nothing in it is text, and it cannot carry a caption | Not by searching, though a transcript can help | Yes, by any word in it |
| Where it goes wrong | Sending one when there is nothing to see — that charges somebody for a view they did not need | Length. Sixty seconds of talking is roughly a hundred and fifty words and takes sixty seconds to receive | Short replies about awkward subjects, which read as curt when they were not meant to |
| In a group | Add a line of text alongside, so people who cannot watch still get the point | Same, and it spares everybody who is somewhere they cannot listen | Already works everywhere, for everybody, silently |
Round video for a face or a thing, voice for words while your hands are busy, text for anything anyone will need again.
swap_vert The asymmetry nobody mentions
Recording is faster than typing and always will be, which is why the two spoken formats feel efficient to the person sending them. The saving is real, but it is not a saving — it is a transfer. Twenty seconds you did not spend writing become twenty seconds somebody else has to spend listening, and if you sent it to a group of thirty, it became ten minutes.
That is not an argument against speaking. It is an argument for noticing which side of the exchange you are on. A round video to one person who will be glad to see your face is a good trade. The same recording dropped into a busy group, containing an address and a time, is a bad one in both directions: expensive to receive and impossible to find afterwards.
The practical version is a single question before you hold the button down. If the content is a feeling, speak. If it is a fact somebody will have to act on, type it — or speak and then type the fact underneath.
picture_in_picture Watching one without stopping
A round video keeps playing when you leave the chat. The circle shrinks and floats over the app, so you can carry on scrolling, answer something else, or look up whatever you have just been shown.
The speed control works here too, which is the polite way to deal with a minute of somebody thinking aloud. Drag the bubble to a corner or flick it away when you are done.
This page is the fixed circular format. The curriculum step is the opposite end: choosing an aspect ratio deliberately, trimming before sending, and the framing decisions that apply when the shape is yours to pick.
At a glance
- 1Voice or video
Tap the microphone to switch to a round video message.
- 2Lock it
Slide up to keep recording without holding the button.
- 3Cancel a bad take
Slide left or tap the bin before it sends.
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