Basic Groups vs Supergroups in Telegram

groups Two rooms with the same name

The first kind is small and simple. It holds up to a couple of hundred people, everybody has broadly the same powers, there is no public address, and somebody joining sees only what is said after they arrive. It is the shape of a family group or a group for one trip.

The second kind — the one everything else in this module is about — scales to two hundred thousand members and is built for rooms that are run rather than merely used. It can have a public address people find by searching, detailed administrator permissions, a rate limit on posting, an audit log of what administrators did, the topics in Step 057, and a single shared history that can be made visible to anybody who joins.

You can usually tell which you are in without looking anything up. If the group has a public link of the form people can type, or an administrators screen with a list of separate permissions, it is the second kind. If the member list is short and there is no such screen, it is probably the first.

history_edu The history setting deserves its own decision

Of everything that changes, this is the one with consequences for people who never agreed to anything.

In the larger kind of group there is one shared timeline, and a setting controls whether somebody joining can scroll back through it. Set to visible, a new member reads every message the group has ever contained. Set to hidden, they start from their arrival.

Both are legitimate and they suit different rooms. A public community where the value is the archive — questions already answered, decisions already explained — should have it visible, and hiding it makes newcomers ask the same things repeatedly. A room where people spoke freely among people they knew should not, because nobody writing there in 2023 was addressing whoever arrives next year.

The awkward case is a group that converted without anybody choosing. If yours did, this is the setting to open and decide about consciously — ideally before inviting anybody new, and with a word to the members if the answer changes what they thought they were writing into.

verified_user What you gain, and when it starts to matter

The additional capabilities are real and they arrive in a particular order as a room grows.

Detailed permissions come first, because the moment a room has more than one moderator you want them to have different powers. Step 058 is the whole subject; the short version is that the ability to grant somebody the right to delete messages without the right to add administrators is what makes delegation safe.

A rate limit on posting matters next, at the point where a room can be flooded faster than anybody can read. Step 060 covers what each interval actually does to a conversation.

The record of administrator actions matters when you no longer know everybody with a badge. It is the only way to answer "who removed that" without an argument, and Step 059 is where it lives.

Topics arrive last, when two conversations are genuinely interrupting each other. Step 057 is next and is largely about not reaching for them too early.

None of this helps a group of twelve, which is the point worth taking from the ordering. Capability is not an improvement until there is a problem it answers.

touch_app Try it now — five minutes

Four steps, and the second is the one that matters for any group you already run.

1. Work out which kind your groups are Open the information screen. An administrators list with separate permissions means the larger kind; its absence usually means the smaller.
2. Find the history setting in any large group you administer Decide it on purpose. If it is visible and the group has years of candid conversation in it, that is a decision somebody should make rather than inherit.
3. Check whether any private group has a public address A public address makes a room findable by strangers. In a group that was meant to stay among people who know each other, that is rarely what anybody intended.
4. Leave the small ones alone If a group works, the correct action is none. The conversion will happen on its own if it is ever needed.

person_check A room where everybody can do everything

One difference between the two kinds is rarely described as a difference and causes more trouble than the member limit.

In a small group, powers are broadly shared. Members can generally rename the room, change its picture, add other people and, depending on how it was set up, remove them. There is no list of administrators with separate permissions because there is very little to separate.

That is fine for six people planning a weekend and becomes awkward at forty. A family group renamed as a joke, a picture changed by somebody's child, a member added by a member who did not check with anybody — none of it is malicious and all of it is friction. There is also no record of who did what, because the audit log in Step 059 belongs to the larger kind.

In the larger kind, those powers are permissions that somebody grants. That sounds bureaucratic for a social room and is the reason a group which has grown past the people who all know each other usually feels better after converting, quite apart from any feature it acquires.

So the honest summary of the trade is not simply size. The smaller room is private and informal, with the drawback that informal means unowned. The larger room can be governed, with the drawback that somebody then has to govern it.

help Common questions at this stage