Telegram - ArchWiki

# Telegram

From ArchWiki

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.

## 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 messenger softwares based on libpurple such as Pidgin is provided.
- Messaging apps that are using Telepathy such as empathy (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 app:

- telegram-desktop, built by Arch Linux
- telegram-desktop-binAUR, built by upstream
- telegram-desktop-systemqt-notoemojiAUR Experimental build of Telegram Desktop using system Qt and emojis replaced with those from Noto Color Emoji.

### 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.

### 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 open source alternative to Franz. It offers all features of its closed source 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

### Telegram channels about Arch Linux

- Arch Linux News - Latest news form Arch web site.
- Planet Arch - Latest posts from Planet Arch web site.
- Arch Linux - Unofficial group for discussing everything about Arch Linux.

### 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.

Category:

- Instant messaging