The Telegram problem nobody talks about
Last summer, a user emailed us from Manchester: 'I've got 8,000 photos in my camera roll. Half of them are screenshots from Telegram group chats I don't even remember joining.' That message sat with me for weeks. Not because it was unusual, but because it was so completely normal.
Why Telegram clogs your phone differently than WhatsApp
WhatsApp gets the blame. Everyone knows WhatsApp fills your storage with months of auto-downloaded media you never asked for. We built WhatsApp detection into Culr early on because it's obvious; the feature practically sells itself.
Telegram is different. Quieter. Worse, in a way.
WhatsApp downloads media to your camera roll by default. You see it happening. Telegram gives you options. You can choose whether to save to camera roll. But here's what actually happens: you're in a group chat, someone shares a meme or a photo, you tap it to view, and there's a small button to save. You tap it without thinking. You do this fifty times a month across five Telegram groups. Now you've got a camera roll half full of screenshots, forwarded images, and photos you have no attachment to whatsoever.
The kicker is that Telegram media looks indistinguishable from your actual photos once it hits your roll. A screenshot of a screenshot of a screenshot sits right next to the photo you took of your dog last weekend. Your phone doesn't know the difference. You have to know the difference.
How we actually find Telegram media
When we set out to build Telegram detection, we had to think about what makes Telegram media detectable in the first place. We couldn't reach into Telegram's database or check metadata against a server. That's not how Culr works. Everything happens on your device.
The approach we landed on uses a combination of forensic cues: file properties, folder structures, the way Telegram caches images locally before they land in your camera roll, and timestamp patterns that Telegram saves create. We look at whether images were saved within characteristic Telegram save windows, whether they cluster in ways that match group chat behaviour, and whether they share metadata fingerprints that Telegram attachments typically carry.
It's not magic. It's observational. When you run Telegram detection in Culr, we're essentially asking: does this photo match the profile of something Telegram put here? If enough signals line up, we flag it.
The honest part is that we're not 100 per cent certain on every image. But we're cautious. If there's ambiguity, we don't flag it. The worst thing we could do is suggest you delete a photo you actually wanted to keep. So we aim for precision over recall.
The bulk-delete workflow changed how people think about cleanup
When Telegram detection landed in Plus, we expected people to use it as a one-off feature. Check what's there, delete the obvious stuff, move on.
What actually happened surprised us. Users started treating Telegram cleanup as a routine part of phone maintenance. They'd run it every few weeks. The bulk-delete workflow, where you can see all detected Telegram media at once and swipe through them as a group, made the task feel less daunting than manually hunting through thousands of photos.
One photographer emailed: 'I didn't realise how much Telegram was eating into my working storage. Now I run Telegram detection before a shoot.' That's the moment we realised this feature was solving something bigger than just clutter.
The UK market, especially, took to it. WhatsApp and Telegram are so embedded in how people communicate here that clearing them out has become almost as routine as deleting emails. We built the feature because we understood the problem. But how people use it has taught us that the problem runs deeper than we thought.
What happens before you hit delete
Here's something we learned early: people are terrified of losing photos they meant to keep. Especially in an app designed to delete things.
Before Culr deletes anything, no matter the source, it checks whether that photo is already safely backed up to iCloud (or whatever cloud service your phone is synced to). If a photo hasn't synced yet, we hold off. We give it time. Only when we're certain a copy exists somewhere else does the delete actually happen.
That check happens every single time. It's not a selling point we shout about, but it's the thing that keeps me from worrying at 2am that we've broken someone's phone.
With Telegram media specifically, this matters more. Telegram photos are often forwards, reposts, and things you don't have another copy of anywhere. The bulk-delete feature shows you exactly what you're about to delete before you confirm it. You can undo. You have control.
The feature you didn't know you needed
I've come to believe that the best features are the ones that solve problems you didn't know were problems until someone solved them.
Telegram media detection is that. Before Culr had it, users didn't wake up thinking 'I wish I could bulk-delete all my Telegram saves.' But once the feature existed, it changed how people understood their own phone storage. It became obvious: oh, that's where all this space went.
We're still learning from how people use it. Some folks delete everything. Others keep a few photos and nuke the rest. Photographers use it to clear space before big shoots. The feature has become less about Telegram specifically and more about giving you visibility into a part of your camera roll that was previously invisible.
If you've never looked at how much storage Telegram has claimed on your phone, it might be worth finding out.
What's your Telegram group chat history like? Thousands of saved memes and screenshots, or barely anything?