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# 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:

### Chat client plugins

- By using the telegram-tdlib-purple-gitAUR package, connection to Telegram through (graphical or command-line) messenger software based on libpurple such as Pidgin is provided.
- Messaging apps that are using Telepathy can make use of telepathy-haze package, which provides possibility of using libpurple and thus telegram-tdlib-purple-gitAUR 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 built by Arch Linux: telegram-desktop.

Third-party clients:

- kepka-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.
- telegram-tgAUR Telegram terminal client. 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.
- TelegramTUI - terminal Telegam client with a pseudo-graphic GUI

### Web-based clients

- The official Telegram WebK.
- The official Telegram WebZ.
- 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 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, install xdg-desktop-portal and xdg-desktop-portal-gtk. See the relevant upstream wiki page for details.

### SVG icon theme in Telegram Desktop

If you want to use an icon theme based on svg image (e.g. papirus-icon-theme) install qt5-svg. See Qt#Icon theme is not applied for details.

### Wayland support

See Wayland#Qt for instructions.

### xdg-open in Telegram Desktop

If you want to use xdg-open on t.me links and receive an error not finding a handler for tg:

    xdg-mime default telegramdesktop.desktop application/x-xdg-protocol-tg
    xdg-mime default telegramdesktop.desktop x-scheme-handler/tg

### Failed to set real-time priority for thread: Operation not permitted

If you get the following error

    $ telegram-desktop

    [ALSOFT] (EE) Failed to set real-time priority for thread: Operation not permitted (1)

Install realtime-privileges, add yourself to the `realtime` group and reboot. See Realtime process management#Configuring PAM for details.

### HiDPI scaling

If you have QT scaling enabled on your system, you may need to disable high-DPI scaling for Telegram separately.

Copy desktop entry to user-specific folder,

    cp /usr/share/applications/telegramdesktop.desktop $HOME/.local/share/applications/telegramdesktop-no-scaling.desktop

Edit Exec= line as follows,

    $HOME/.local/share/applications/telegramdesktop-no-scaling.desktop

    Exec=env -u QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS telegram-desktop -- %u

You may need to update database of desktop entries.

### Audio backend

As Telegram makes use of OpenAL, it is possible to configure the audio settings by editing its config files, i.e. `~/.config/alsoft.conf`, or the environment variables listed here.

In case sound is not working due to an invalid audio backend being used, it can be overwritten by setting the environment variable `ALSOFT_DRIVERS` or the `drivers` property in the `[general]` section of the OpenAL config. The drivers value `"pulse,"` for example would try pulseaudio first and then fallback to the default driver list.

### Choose correct web camera

Telegram version 3.7.1 does not allow to select the web camera to use in video conference. If you want to force telegram to use a different camera, as a workaround you can disable the unwanted camera device as described in [1].

## See also

- 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).

Category:

- Instant messaging