Telegram has a feature that allows you to organize your chats into chat folders. If you’re like me, someone who mutes most of the notifications from messaging apps, then there’s a chance you might miss an important message. But with folders, you can at a glance scroll through the messages from your most important contacts.

Why You Should Organize Your Chats

Telegram is one of the chat apps I don’t use daily. I only open it to get news, updates, and important messages. A few days ago while scrolling through Telegram, I noticed that I missed some DMs from a few months ago. My Telegram feed is quite cluttered because I’ve joined a bunch of groups and channels. Unlike Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Signal, the Telegram UI feels a bit clunky. So, missing a message or two seems very normal.

But that’s where folders come into play. After organizing all my chats, I’ve never missed any important messages from individuals or groups. Whenever I open Telegram, I can see all the chats I’m interested in at a glance. No need to scroll through the whole feed just to look for certain chats. A big win.

How to Organize Telegram Chats Into Folders

Open the Telegram app and tap the hamburger icon in the top left corner of the screen, then go to “Settings.” Under the Settings section, you should see an option called “Chat Folders.”

Right now, there’s only one folder, the “All Chats” folder, but you can create as many folders as you like. Then, in those folders, you can add chats based on criteria or by hand-picking. You can also notice Telegram recommending two folders, the “Unread” and the “Personal” folder. Like me, if you want to create a folder only for direct messages from people, the “Personal” folder comes in handy. You can press the “Add” button to create it quickly.

You can continue creating more folders by pressing the “Create New Folder” button. You should see a bunch of options. First is the chat name, and then you have the “Included Chats” option, where you can add chats individually or by chat type. So, for this folder, I’m only going to include Telegram groups in it. Press the “Add Chats” button.

Under the “Chat types” section, select the “Groups” option. I don’t want to add any other chats to this folder, but you can add more chats to the folder if you like. There’s also a search option where you can enter a user’s name or chat name to find it. You can add up to 100 chats to a folder. Once you’ve added all the chats, click the tick mark to finish.

Suppose you want to get all the Telegram group chats in one folder. However, there are a few groups you don’t want to add. You can exclude them using this option. Simply click the “Add Chats to Exclude” button and select any chat from the given list to exclude them from a folder. For excluding chats, you’re also given a few chat types such as “Muted,” “Read,” and “Archived,” to make your exclusions quick.

The last thing to do is finish creating the folder. To do that, press the “Save” button in the top right corner of the screen.

If you have a folder that contains only individual chats (so no Groups, Channels, or Contacts), you can also create an invitation link for the chat folder and share it with others. In the same way, you can create chat folders for Telegram channels, friends, family, and work. You can also edit or delete chat folders from the same menu where you created them.

Now, if you return to the main feed on Telegram, you’ll see all the chat folders at the top of the screen. You can press on each folder name to display the chats specific to that folder. But the best part is that you’ll also see a number beside the folder name, indicating the unread messages. So if you receive any new message, you’ll know that immediately from the number. The same applies to Telegram on the desktop.

If you prefer using the desktop version, you can also create or delete folders from there. Similar to the mobile app, go to Menu > Settings. Instead of a “Chat Folders” option, you’ll find a “Folders” option. The rest of the process is identical.

That’s all there is to know about Telegram chat folders. No matter how many groups or channels you’ve joined, you don’t need to worry about finding that specific chat you look forward to. More social chat apps should implement a similar chat organization feature so that people can find the chats they’re looking for quickly.