Use case
Hide Telegram Web chats in screen shares and screenshots
Telegram is where a lot of people keep the conversations they don’t have anywhere else: community groups, project channels, side work, friends abroad, and the notes they send to themselves in Saved Messages. Telegram Web puts all of that in a browser tab, on the same computer you use for meetings, demos and screenshots.
Open it during a call and the chat list is the first thing anyone sees. It shows every person, group and channel you’ve talked to recently, with their photo, the last message and an unread count. The folder tabs at the top show how you’ve sorted your life into groups. None of it was meant for an audience, and on a recorded call a single frame is enough for someone to read it later.
What a Telegram Web screen share gives away
The chat list shows who you talk to and what about. Group names often say exactly what a group is for: a job search, a crypto community, a health support group, a side business. Channel names show what you read. The order of the list shows what you’ve been doing in the last hour.
Telegram also shows details about other people that they may not want shared. Telegram’s own FAQ says that by default your phone number is visible only to people who have you saved as a contact. That cuts both ways: when you open the profile of someone you’ve saved, their number is right there on your screen. Telegram also says plainly that usernames are public, so a username shown on a call is enough for anyone watching to find and message that person.
Your own Saved Messages chat is often the most sensitive thing in the list. People use it as a notepad, for links, documents, addresses and reminders, and it sits in the chat list like any other conversation.
Telegram Web screenshots have the same problem in a smaller frame. You screenshot one message to share it, and the image also captures the chat list beside it, the group or contact name in the header and whatever else was said around it.
Why the usual advice only goes so far
The standard advice is to share one tab or window instead of your whole screen, close Telegram before a call, and turn off notifications. All of it is worth doing, but it relies on remembering every time. And sometimes Telegram is what you need to show: a message from a community you moderate, a bot you’re building, a channel post you want to discuss. Closing the tab doesn’t help then. What you want is to show the one chat that matters and keep everything else unreadable.
How to hide Telegram Web chats with Smart Blur
Smart Blur is a browser extension that blurs personal information on the page itself, on your computer, before anyone on the call sees it. Nothing is uploaded and there’s no account. It works on Telegram Web the same way it works on any other site, so the setup you make for Telegram also protects your inbox, CRM and other tabs.
Smart Blur has several ways to blur, and each suits a different part of Telegram Web. The first four are free.
Blur the whole chat list with Draw
If you just want the chat list gone before you share, choose Draw in the Smart Blur panel and drag a box over the left-hand column. Names, photos, previews and unread counts underneath are blurred. Include the folder tabs at the top if their names say more than you’d like.
The box stays on the chats it was drawn over. If you scroll the chat list, the box moves with those chats and new ones come into view uncovered, so draw it once the list is where you want it and leave it there during the call.
Blur one photo, name or message with Click
To hide something specific, choose Click and click on it. Click a profile photo to blur that photo. Click the name in the chat header to hide who you’re talking to while the conversation stays readable. Click a single message to blur just that message.
Click blurs the one item you clicked. If you switch to a different chat, Telegram redraws the header, so check it again before carrying on.
Hide names everywhere with Keywords to hide
For contacts and groups you never want on screen, add them as Keywords to hide. Open the Smart Blur panel, click Settings, choose Keywords to hide, and add each name. Smart Blur blurs the name wherever it appears: in the chat list, the chat header, forwarded messages, replies and search results, including when a new message moves the chat to the top.
Tick Limit to specific domains or URLs and enter web.telegram.org if you
only want those names hidden in Telegram. If a name catches you by surprise
mid-call, type it into Hide a keyword or name… in the panel and it’s blurred
straight away until you reload the page.
Blur phone numbers, emails and usernames with patterns
Turn on Emails, phones, cards… in the panel and Smart Blur blurs email addresses, card numbers and phone numbers as the page loads and as new messages arrive.
Telegram shows phone numbers in international format, with a + and the
country code, and the phone pattern recognises the common formats for each
country: +1 416 555 0123, +44 7700 900123 and +91 98765 43210 are all
blurred without any setup.
Usernames need a pattern of your own. Telegram usernames start with @ and
are at least five characters long, so this pattern blurs them in messages and
profiles without touching email addresses. Click Edit next to the pattern
switch, go to Your own patterns, choose Write a regex, name it
something like “Telegram usernames”, and enter:
\B@[A-Za-z0-9_]{5,32}\bTick Limit to specific domains or URLs and enter web.telegram.org if you
only want usernames hidden in Telegram.
Find names and addresses in messages with Local AI (Pro)
Patterns find text with a fixed shape. Names and addresses written in ordinary sentences don’t have one: “meet Daniel at the café on Rue Oberkampf”. Smart Blur Pro adds Local AI, which reads the text on the page and blurs the names, addresses and account numbers it finds. It runs entirely on your computer after a one-time download, so your messages never leave it. It’s useful in busy groups, where you can’t predict who or what will come up.
Screenshots
Because Smart Blur blurs the page itself, any screenshot you take of Telegram Web, with your computer’s own screenshot tool or anything else, shows the blur too. Set up the blur first, then take the screenshot. Smart Blur Pro also has a Screenshot button that captures the visible area or a region you select, already blurred.
Turning it on when you share
Blurring works while Smart Blur is switched on, using the switch at the top of the panel. If you’d rather it switched on by itself, Smart Blur Pro adds Share Shield, which turns blurring on the moment you start sharing your screen from the browser.
What Smart Blur can’t cover
Smart Blur works inside the browser. Desktop notifications from Telegram Web are drawn by your operating system, outside the page, so it can’t blur them. If you share your whole screen, turn off message previews in Telegram’s notification settings or switch on Do Not Disturb before the call. The Telegram desktop app is outside its reach too; for calls, use Telegram in the browser.
Images, stickers and videos aren’t text, so patterns and Keywords to hide don’t see inside them. Use Click or Draw to cover a photo or a screenshot someone posted in a chat.
Your browser’s tab bar can also give Telegram away, with an unread count in the tab title. Set Hide tab names in the panel to All tabs before you share. See hide tab names when screen sharing for what else tab titles reveal.
A quick check before your next call
Open Telegram Web, open Smart Blur, and decide what needs to go: the whole chat list, a few groups, or just the numbers and usernames. Add the names you’ll always want hidden to Keywords to hide and turn on patterns, so that part is done for every future call. Then start a test share or take a screenshot and look at it the way someone else on the call would.
If you also use WhatsApp in the browser, the same approach works there: see hide WhatsApp Web chats in screen shares and screenshots.