Telegram - ArchWiki

Jump to content

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:

- 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, set `QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME` environment variable to `gtk3`.

### KDE dialogs in Telegram Desktop

If you want to use KDE file dialogs instead of Qt ones, set `QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME` environment variable to `xdgdesktopportal`.

### 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

This article or section is a candidate for merging with GNOME/Troubleshooting.

Notes: Not specific to Telegram. (Discuss in Talk:Telegram)

GNOME Wayland may not set cursor settings for Telegram[1][2]. This may result in cursors being of the wrong theme, size and not being able to resize the window.

Set `XCURSOR_THEME` and `XCURSOR_SIZE` environment variables manually (e.g., `XCURSOR_THEME=Adwaita` and `XCURSOR_SIZE=24`)

See Wayland#Qt for further 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, and the scaling factor is not an integer, you may encounter problems like pixelated images and icons. you may need to disable high-DPI scaling for Telegram separately.

Copy `/usr/share/applications/telegramdesktop.desktop` to your user-specific applications and edit it 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 the 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 [3].

### Fcitx support for Qt 6 Telegram

Telegram-desktop is built against Qt 6 since 3.4.2-2. Users upgrading from an older version might notice Fcitx stop working for this application. To make it work again, install fcitx-qt6 or the fcitx-im group. If using Fcitx5, install fcitx5-im.

## 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

Hidden category:

- Pages or sections flagged with Template:Merge