Animated Stickers Autoplay, And Can't Be Stopped

[lupinia]

Steps to reproduce

1. Set "Autoplay GIFs" to Off under Settings >> Advanced
2. Open a chat that contains an animated sticker

Expected behaviour

Animated stickers should respect the Autoplay GIFs setting, or there should be another setting disable animated sticker autoplay.

Actual behaviour

Animated stickers autoplay, and there appears to be no possible way to stop them or disable this behavior.

Configuration

Operating system: Windows 7, and Windows 10

Version of Telegram Desktop: 1.7.13

Used theme: Default, I guess?

[mbasaglia]

Another thing to note is animated stickers don't follow the "enable animations" setting either

[namikiri]

Totally agree. We need an ability to disable animated stickers or to play them on demand, not automatically.

[NexonSU]

Use provided source code and build your own telegram with your preferences. You can even complitely disable every media content via source code.

[mbasaglia]

Use provided source code and build your own telegram with your preferences. You can even complitely disable every media content via source code.

I would if telegram desktop had working build instructions but alas I never managed to build it (see also #6076)

[namikiri]

@NexonSU it looks like a unviersal response for every feature request. "We won't implement that, do it on your own".

[igoradamenko]

It seems it's not enough to disable animation, because there are lots of stickers where first frame doesn't convey meaning. I'm not sure that *.tgs files contain any frame that “has all the meaning” and you can pick and show exactly this frame.

So, it's possible just to disable animation, but it ruins the meaning of the sticker.

[Remu-rin]

So, it's possible just to disable animation, but it ruins the meaning of the sticker.

Same for GIFs. Same for disabling auto-download for photos. They are blurred. Why animated stickers should be different? And first of all, why user can't disable auto-downloading regular stickers?

[igoradamenko]

@Remu-rin, good points, thanks. I didn't think about a possibility of showing animated stickers like paused GIFs. I though that they should be just static without any interactivity.

[encratite]

I was forced to disable stickers in all my groups because of this "feature." We absolutely need an option to disable auto-play on these. They're obnoxious. I'd even like to have an additional permission for my groups so I can enable regular stickers and disable animated ones.

[brawaru]

Would be great to have a choice in settings if whether you want stickers to play:

• Automatically
• ~~Automatically, but very slow (x0.25)~~
• While you hover cursor over them
• On click

If they aren't playing automatically, first frame shown with play / animation icon (as with the ticks on your messages, but without need to hover over sticker):

[raku-cat]

I'd like to point out to you all that this is in fact the telegram desktop client repo, not telegram itself, so doing feature requests here is quite futile. As an official client this one tries to stay as close to the other official clients as possible(I believe it's actually a requirement?), and new features to all of them typically start out on telegram android or ios. Fortunately, iOS currently has a few beta features including this one (https://t.me/tgbeta/3746), so you can count on this feature to be implemented on this client soon.

But, for future reference you're better off bugging telegram on twitter, as you're more likely to be heard there, telegram doesn't monitor this repo at all from what I understand.

(The following is all my understanding, I'm not affiliated with telegram in any way) The way the structure of telegram works is, there's the unnamed telegram overlords, and then the client devs, the closest the client devs get to the overlords is that they communicate between each other somehow, the overlords may tell the client devs "Implement this new feature" and give them early information of a new API thing(for example, archived chats), or just tell them to implement a new client side feature (non-looping animated stickers), other than that there's not much communication both ways, and the client devs are not telegram staff, nor are they allowed to simply say "I want this to be a feature, I'm putting it in!", telegram has to decide that.

However, as an individual, you are able to fork the clients and do whatever the hell you want, or make your own client using the available protocol specifications, and again do whatever you want, which is why you may be often told when requesting a feature in this repo to "go do it yourself", as that's the easiest way to get what you want other than bugging telegram on twitter.

[brawaru]

@raku-cat

Off-topic

I disagree that we are going to be heard in Twitter. From what I have seen, Twitter team selectively replying to the tweets for what they are ready implement or already implementing (what's on their roadmap). Telegram never ever replied to my tweets even if they were well written, plus I deleted my account then and never ever want to touch Twitter again, because it simply broken. And you believe no other person already tweeted them about that?

---

Please, never do or agree with telling other people to “go make a fork of the client to implement whatever they want” in any project. Because if you ever worked on project like this, you should know how much of responsibility is it.

Probably half of the people at this issue have no experience in C, they can't just fork and start implementing whatever they want, they need to learn language, Qt framework, and practicing on Telegram Desktop code probably isn't best thing to do for the beginners. Yet another reason already was pointed here and here:

Unfortunately we do not merge any pull requests that have new feature implementations, translations to new languages and those which introduce any new user interface elements. — CONTRIBUTING

Ideally issues being opened not only for the devs, but for the other people, who want to contribute to open source project, so they can quickly catch the issue and make pull request based of it (but they cannot with Telegram Desktop).

---

If you see above, we are mostly putting feedback how better this feature can be implemented and why it has to be implemented. There is also no feedback site what moving users to create issues in clients' repositories. It the end, don't they want issues like that, it could be put in the same CONTRIBUTING file, right now there is only information about pull requests.

I believe nothing (probably) stopping devs of Telegram Desktop to show this issue to the Telegram Team, and if something does that, it means their structure is broken (welp, nothing we can do about this).

---

Everything you wrote can be simplified as “Maybe you guys should better bug Telegram in Twitter.”

P.S. Sorry for everyone who subscribed to this issue

[stale[bot]]

Hey there!

This issue will be automatically closed in 7 days if there would be no activity. We therefore assume that the user has lost interest or resolved the problem on their own.

Don't worry though; if this is an error, let us know with a comment and we'll be happy to reopen the issue.

Thanks!

[brawaru]

~~I hate stale bots~~. This issue was not resolved. Although we've got an option to not REPLAY stickers automatically, many nasty things can be done during the first play of sticker. Option to play stickers manually would still be highly appreciated.

[g0ren]

Now in late 2021 this issue has become even more pressing. It is this year when a new trend emerged to create stickers deliberately designed to cause epilepsy in people who are vulnerable to this and post them randomly in chats and reply threads. For people who are prone to paroxysms such stickers are a serious health hazard. If a person has a seizure because of this, it can, depending on the circumstances, lead to serious bodily harm or even death. As such, having a way to disable animations altogether or to at least disable automatic animation of stickers has become not just a quality of life feature, but, pardon my pathos, a life or death feature.

[brawaru]

Guys, please consider upvoting and commenting on official Feature requests & Bugs tracker: https://bugs.telegram.org/c/882.

It's an important accessibility feature and shame on Telegram for ignoring it.

[lupinia]

Guys, please consider upvoting and commenting on official Feature requests & Bugs tracker: https://bugs.telegram.org/c/882.

It's an important accessibility feature and shame on Telegram for ignoring it.

Thank you for the heads-up! It's now been over two and a half years, and not only has this still not been addressed, the uncontrollable animations that don't respect the "disable animations" setting have somehow gotten even worse.

EDIT: Related bugs on the Telegram tracker:

• "Hide reaction animations": https://bugs.telegram.org/c/12492
• "Turn off reaction animations": https://bugs.telegram.org/c/12696
• "Animated single emoji" (toggle when sending instead of receiving): https://bugs.telegram.org/c/2488
• "Disable animation please": https://bugs.telegram.org/c/12938
• "Video stickers ignore 'disable animations' accessibility settings": https://bugs.telegram.org/c/14346
• "Seasonal snow animation does not obey accessibility settings": https://bugs.telegram.org/c/14343
• "Having a setting to choose which animations to disable": https://bugs.telegram.org/c/4190

[USSX-Hares]

Three years have passed. The issue is still not resolved. What a great app!

[senyai]

I just had an epilepsy seizures. Thanks telegram!

[BoffinBrain]

See also: #25209

[BoffinBrain]

See also: #24658