Telegram
Telegram is a cloud-based cross-platform instant messaging service with optional end-to-end encryption. Account creation requires a phone number.
The official clients are open-source but the code for recent versions is not always immediately published. The server-side code is proprietary.
Contents
Installation
You can use one of following methods in order to use Telegram in Arch:
Chat client plugins
- By using telegram-purpleAUR or telegram-purple-gitAUR packages, connection to Telegram through (graphical or command-line) messenger softwares based on libpurple such as Pidgin is provided.
- Messaging apps that are using Telepathy such as empathyAUR (the default messenger for GNOME) can make use of telepathy-haze package, which provides possibility of using libpurple and thus telegram-purpleAUR to connect Telegram.
- In the KDE desktop environment using telepathy-morse provides capability of connecting the default messenger to Telegram.
Graphical clients
The official application:
- telegram-desktop — built by Arch Linux
- telegram-desktop-binAUR — built by upstream
Third-party clients:
- bettergramAUR
- kepka-gitAUR
- cutegram-gitAUR
- telegreat-gitAUR
- kotatogram-desktop-binAUR, kotatogram-desktopAUR, kotatogram-desktop-dynamic-binAUR
Command-line clients
- telegram-cli-gitAUR provides command-line interface to connect and use Telegram. For more information about the program, visit the program page on Github.
- nctelegram-gitAUR is a command-line interface for Telegram based on Ncurses and needs telegram-cli-gitAUR to run. For more information about the program, visit the program page on Github.
- python-telegram-sendAUR, not a full client but a command-line tool to directly send messages or files via Telegram.
- telega.el - GNU Emacs Telegram client.
Web-based clients
- The official Telegram Web.
- franzAUR is an open-source web-based application that can be used for web-based interface of various instant messaging software such as Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and more.
- rambox-binAUR is an alternative to Franz, also open source. It offers all features of its counterpart.
- Use Telegram Desktop addons for Firefox, to connect to Telegram in your browser via web interface.
- Use Telegram Chrome app for Chromium, to connect to Telegram in your browser via web interface.
Tips and tricks
GTK dialogs in Telegram Desktop
If you want to use GTK file dialogs instead of Qt ones, set QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME
environment variable to gtk3
.
Wayland support
See Wayland#Qt 5 for instructions. Also, Wayland doesn't support absolute positioning, therefore notifications are positioned wrong. The only fix is to enable native notifications in settings.
Telegram resources about Arch Linux
- Arch Linux - Unofficial group for discussing everything about Arch Linux.
- ArchWikiBot - Inline bot for searching through ArchWiki pages.
- Planet Arch Linux & News - Channel with recent Planet Arch updates and Latest News in one place.
- Arch Linux: Recent package updates - Channel with recent package updates in Arch Linux repositories.
- Arch Linux News - Channel with news from Arch web site (not updated since 2018).
- Planet Arch - Channel with posts from Planet Arch web site (not updated since 2018).
Unread messages counter for Telegram Desktop
By default, only the icon in the system tray will show the number of unread messages.
If you want to have the actual app icon to show the unread message counter as well, you can use the Unity badge integration, which can be handled by KDE and Gnome as well.
To enable the Unity integration, you will have to install libunityAUR and start Telegram Desktop with the XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP
environment variable set to Unity
, e.g. copy the .desktop
file to ~/.local/share/applications/
and change the Exec
line to start Telegram Desktop with the environment variable set instead.
Telegram and Plasma
In KDE Plasma, desktop session is restored on login by default. This causes Telegram to auto-start on login if it had not been closed on logout.
To change this behavior, you can disable Telegram's auto-start from System Settings > Workspace > Startup and Shutdown > Autostart.
Also, you can disable Session restoration by changing the option on System Settings > Workspace > Startup and Shutdown > Desktop Session > On Login. You may either exclude Telegram or select the "Start with an empty session" option. This should stop Telegram from auto-starting.