Group administrators with “Ban users” permissions are able to set history visibility in that group: make it hidden or visible. In this article, we explain in detail how this setting works.

Why did we decide to write this article at all? The answer is simple: the setting works in a rather unpredictable way. There is one general rule and two rare and, unfortunately, not very useful exceptions.

1. When user joins a group with a hidden history, Telegram hides old messages from they almost forever

The general rule is as follows:

If a user joins a group when chat history is hidden, Telegram permanently hides from that user all messages sent to group before the user joined. After that, no user actions or changes to the “Chat History” setting will force the Telegram platform to show the user past messages.

Please note two important points:

1. It does not matter what the user did before joining the group and what he will do after. Even if he had previously seen all the group’s messages, re-joining the group with the chat history turned off will hide all previous messages from him.
2. It does not matter how and when the group administrators changed the «Chat History» setting in it before the user joined and how they will change it after he joined. The only important thing is whether the history visibility was turned on at the time the user entered the group. If it was not, then he will never be able to see all the messages before he entered.

For example, the following actions will NOT help you see hidden messages:

1. Enable history visibility in the group.
2. Kick the user out of the group, enable history visibility in it, and add the user back.
3. Ask the user to leave the group themselves, enable history visibility, and ask the user to rejoin the group.
4. Suggest the user to leave the group, enable history visibility, and ask the user to rejoin using a different invitation link.
5. Make the group public. Or kick the user, make the group public, and add them back.

, etc. None of this will work: messages sent before the user entered the group with hidden chat history will never be shown to the user.

Well, almost never. There are two exceptions.

2. Exception #1

If the group administrators enable the “Topics” setting in it, then in some cases the user can even see those messages that were previously hidden from him.

Please note: “can see”, but not necessarily will see. If messages were sent to the group before it became a supergroup, then they will not be visible to the new member even after topics are enabled.

If the administrators then disable topics in the group, then the user will again stop seeing messages hidden from him.

3. Exception #2

When someone adds a new member to a basic group, the Telegram app may offer to show this member the last 100 messages of the group. If you agree to this offer, these 100 messages will, of course, become visible to the new member.

Please note: if member A adds member B to the group and allows him to see the last 100 messages, then member B will only see those messages that are visible to member A. If some messages were hidden from A, then B will not see them either.

If he then leaves the group and rejoins it using the invitation link, then those 100 messages will be hidden for him, in full accordance with the rule from point 1. But if one of the group members adds him, the app will again offer to show him the last 100 messages of the group.

4. Please also note

If you enable history visibility in a basic group, it will turn into a supergroup, without any warning and irreversibly.

A card with a request to change the logic of the “Chat history” setting was created on the proposal platform more than two years ago and is available at https://bugs.telegram.org/c/19054. In it, the author suggests the following: if a user joined a group with a hidden history, and then the administrators enabled history visibility, then after re-entering the group, this user would be able to see messages that were previously hidden from him. The card has already gained quite a lot of likes, but it does not seem that the Telegram administration plans to make the proposed changes.