Telegram's backgrounds are not pictures. You choose three or four colours and the app draws a gradient from them, which shifts slightly each time a message is sent. Around that you can set the accent colour, the shape of the message bubbles, and a pattern over the top.
A finished theme can be given a link and handed to other people, and it keeps updating for them when you change it. Two of these controls also do something most people do not expect, which is the part worth reading.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Build a background out of colours rather than finding a wallpaper image.
- check_circle Change the bubble shape and accent to something you can read for hours.
- check_circle Set a theme for one conversation — and know who else sees it.
- check_circle Share a theme as a link, and understand what that link keeps doing afterwards.
The background is being computed, not loaded — which is why it can move when a message arrives without costing anything.
palette Colours, not wallpapers
A background made from three or four colours is drawn by the app at whatever size your screen is. It is sharp on every device, it costs almost nothing to store, and it can move gently when you send something because there is no image to move.
On top of it you can lay a pattern — a repeating motif whose strength you set — and behind everything sits the accent colour that links, buttons and your own message bubbles use. The bubble corner radius is a separate slider, from square to almost round.
The practical advice on all of it is the same: choose for reading, not for the screenshot. A high-contrast pattern behind small text is tiring within a day, and the accent has to stay legible against both bubble colours, not just the one you were looking at when you picked it.
Four levels of changing how it looks
Each one is more work than the last, and the third has a consequence people do not expect.
palette Pick one that already exists
wallpaper Building a background
group A theme for one conversation
Start from a preset, change the accent, and only build a background once you know what you want it to be quieter than.
settings Where the controls are
- Open the appearance settings Settings, then Appearance on iOS or Chat Settings on Android.
- Choose a theme, then the accent The colour swatches under the theme list change the accent without touching anything else.
- Open Chat Background Set colours, choose a pattern, set its strength, and turn the motion on or off.
- Adjust the bubble corners The radius slider is on the same screen. Small changes are the visible ones.
- Set the dark variant too Switch the app to dark and repeat. Two themes, not one.
- For one chat Open that chat, its menu, then Change Colours or Set Wallpaper — remembering that it applies for both of you.
This page is the theme engine as a whole. The curriculum step goes deeper into the background specifically: what makes an image work behind text, how blur and dimming are applied, and the motion settings that make a backdrop feel alive rather than busy.
At a glance
- 1Build a theme
Choose colours, a gradient background and bubble style.
- 2Readable first
Check a long message in your own bubble before keeping it.
- 3Sharing a theme
A theme link keeps updating everyone who installed it.
Updated
