Telegram messenger client for GNU Emacs (unofficial client)

telega.el

telega.el is full featured unofficial client for Telegram platform for GNU Emacs .

telega.el is actively developed, for this reason, some features are not implemented, or they are present just as skeleton for future implementation. However, the core parts are mature enough so that it is possible to use telega.el for basic chat.

Features

In some random order:

• Listing chats, reordering chats according to internal Telegram order
• Getting info about users, groups and supergroups
• Joining chats by invitation link M-x telega-chat-join-by-link RET
• Fetching chat history, sending messages, replies, edits, deleting
• Resend failed messages
• Creating new groups, upgrading basicgroup to supergroup
• Forwarding messages
• D-Bus notifications on incoming messages in chats with enabled notifications
• VoIP calls, including D-Bus call notification
• Downloading files from the cloud
• Uploading files/media (also pasting images from clipboard) to the cloud
• Display chat actions, such as "@user is typing..."
• Display/Update chat's draft message
• Company backends for emoji ( :<emoji> syntax), usernames, hashtags, bot commands completions
• Secret chats
• Online global searching chats/contacts/messages
• Avatars, Photos, Stickers
• Animated GIF, via ffplay
• Special messages such as location/live location, voice/video messages, contacts, self-destruct photo/video, etc
• Poll messages, Poll creation
• Games, Game Scores
• Handling local links, such as "tg:" or " https://t.me/xxx "
• ReplyMarkup (inline keyboard buttons) in the messages
• InstantView for web pages
• Blocking/Unblocking users, listing blocked users
• Inline bots requests, via "@bot query"
• Chat Lists, "Archived Chats", see telega#100
• Searching for messages in chat (PARTLY)
• Shared media
• Multiple accounts
• Traffic control, see telega#62
• TranslationsPlatform support (PARTLY)
• Message scheduling, reminders [PARTLY]
• Cloud themes, see TDLib#691
• Telegram Folders (since TDLib 1.6.6)

Unique features

• Expressive ibuffer -like chats filtering
• Powerful chats sorting
• Custom order for chats (some chats on top, some chats on bottom, etc)
• Labeled chats, you can assign custom label to chat
• Client side messages filtering
• Get diff for the message edits, see screenshot
• Messages squashing minor mode.

Screenshots

Root buffer screen:

Chat in @emacs_en group:

Attaching funny cat sticker:

Installation

telega.el depends on the visual-fill-column and rainbow-identifiers packages. This dependency automatically installs if you install telega from MELPA or GNU Guix. Otherwise will you need to install these packages by hand.

telega.el is built on top of the official library provided by Telegram TDLib 1.6.6 . Most distributions do not provide this package in their repositories, in which case you will have to install it manually by following the instructions.

GNU Guix , however, does have both telega.el and TDLib packaged. If you use GNU Guix you can skip directly toInstalling from GNU Guix.

Dependencies

• GNU Emacs (at least 26.1 is required)
• GNU make
• GNU gperf
• CMake
• Python (for testing the server)
• GNU Guix (optional, if using the Guix installation method.)

make is found in most of the modern machines. The other packages can be download with the system package manager (such as apt for Debian-based distributions, dnf for Fedora or pacman for Arch-based).

MacOS users

1. If you are using Emacs For Mac OS X , or you installed Emacs by running brew cask install emacs , your Emacs lacks svg support, so you cannot use telega. Please switch to emacs-plus .

2. If you are using Emacs-mac , or you installed Emacs by running brew install emacs-mac or brew cask install emacs-mac , your Emacs has bug dealing with complex svg, which leads to Emacs hangups. Compiling Emacs with rsvg support by running brew install emacs-mac --with-rsvg will fix this problem.

   NOTE: Telega cannot display stickers correctly with emacs-mac, even when emacs-mac is compiled with rsvg support. If you want sticker support, please consider switching to emacs-plus.

3. emacs-plus is the best choice to run telega.

Linux users

telega.el requires at least GNU Emacs 26.1 with imagemagick and svg support. Most distributions provide GNU Emacs compiled with these dependencies when installing GNU Emacs with GTK+ support (graphical).

Building tdlib

TDLib is the library for building Telegram clients. It requires a large amount of memory to be built. Make sure you are using TDLib version 1.6.6.

On MacOS you can install a pre-built tdlib package using homebrew from brew.sh . Just run:

$ brew install tdlib

On Linux, you will need to build tdlib from source.

To get the source:

$ git clone https://github.com/tdlib/td.git

Move into the folder with cd ./td or wherever you checked out td .

Prepare a folder for building the library:

$ mkdir build && cd build && cmake ../

Build the sources:

$ make -jN

with N number of cores that should be used for the compilation (the optimal value is the number of physical cores on the machine).

Finally, to install the library system-wide:

$ sudo make install

It will install headers to /usr/local/include and library itself into /usr/local/lib . These paths are hardcoded in telega.el .

Building libtgvoip

VoIP support in telega.el is optional, if you don't need VoIP, just ignore this section.

libtgvoip is the VoIP library for telegram clients. This is the fork from original library with patches needed by telega.el .

To get the source:

$ git clone https://github.com/zevlg/libtgvoip.git

Move into the folder with cd ./libtgvoip or wherever you checked out libtgvoip .

Prepare a folder for building the library:

$ autoreconf --force --install && ./configure && make

Install the library system-wide:

$ sudo make install

It will also install headers to /usr/local/include and library into /usr/local/lib .

Installing telega.el from MELPA

telega.el is available from MELPA , so you can install it from there as usual package. This is a preferable method, because it will automatically handle all dependencies. After installing telega.el from MELPA you can skip tosection.

Or you could use git repository with this melpa-style recipe:

(:fetcher github
 :repo "zevlg/telega.el"
 :branch "master"
 :files (:defaults "etc" "server" "Makefile"))

Building telega-server

Now that the TDLib library is set-up, it is time to install telega.el . The first step consists in building telega-server , which is a C interface to the TDLib , or just let telega ask you at the first start and do the job (dependencies for compilation will need to be installed ahead-of-time).

To get the source:

$ git clone https://github.com/zevlg/telega.el

Moving into the folder with cd telega.el , it is possible to build the telega-server executable and move into the $HOME/.telega with:

$ make && make install && make test

If you want VoIP support in telega.el and libtgvoip is installed, then use this instead:

$ make WITH_VOIP=t && make WITH_VOIP=t install && make WITH_VOIP=t test

This command does not require superuser privileges.

Start with M-x telega RET and follow instructions

Installing telega.el

Now it is time to install telega.el on GNU Emacs.

This can be done with use-package :

(use-package telega
  :load-path  "~/telega.el"
  :commands (telega)
  :defer t)

Or with:

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/telega.el")
(require 'telega)

The code should be put in the configuration file for Emacs, which usually is init.el , or emacs.el .

Installing telega.el and tdlib from GNU Guix

telega.el and tdlib are both available in GNU Guix. If you have a resource constrained machine or would simply prefer to bypass compiling tdlib from source, this is a good option!

On Guix System:

$ guix package -i emacs-telega

On "Foreign" Distributions:

• Use the shell installer script, or install GNU Guix manually on-top of your current distribution. Installation Documentation

• Enable fetching substitutes from the build server cache if you do not wish to build from source. Substitute Server Authorization

• And finally, run:

$ guix package -i emacs emacs-telega

You will need a version of emacs installed from GNU Guix because it is modified with an autoloader to identify and automatically use emacs packages installed from Guix.

Consult the official GNU Guix documentation for further questions. Issues related to the GUIX package must be accompanied by the GUIX label in the issue tracker.

Do note that since telega is actively maintained installations from Guix might at times lag behind master, but regular attempts to keep it updated will occur. If the version in Guix is too outdated or is missing a feature, please use the protocol for the issue tracker.

Fire up telega.el

telega.el can now be started with M-x telega RET . The first time it will ask for the phone number you have associated with the Telegram network.

Minor modes

See Minor Modes section in telega manual .

telega-notifications-mode

telega.el ships with support for D-Bus notifications, but they are disabled by default. To enable notifications add next code to your init.el :

(telega-notifications-mode 1)

Enabling emoji completions in chat buffer

Emoji completions with :<EMOJI-NAME>: syntax, uses nice company-mode . It provides telega-company-emoji company backend. So you need to add it to company-backends , maybe along with other backends in telega-chat-mode-hook , for example:

(add-hook 'telega-chat-mode-hook
          (lambda ()
            (set (make-local-variable 'company-backends)
                 (append '(telega-company-emoji
                           telega-company-username
                           telega-company-hashtag)
                         (when (telega-chat-bot-p telega-chatbuf--chat)
                           '(telega-company-botcmd))))
            (company-mode 1)))

Configuring client side messages filtering

In official telegram clients all messages in group chats are displayed even if message has been sent by blocked user. telega.el has client side message filtering feature implemented. Ignoring messages can be done via installing special functions into telega-chat-insert-message-hook which could mark message as ignored, for example, to ignore messages from particular user with id=12345 you could add next code:

(defun my-telega-ignore-12345-user (msg &rest notused)
  (when (= (plist-get msg :sender_user_id) 12345)
    (telega-msg-ignore msg)))

(add-hook 'telega-chat-insert-message-hook 'my-telega-ignore-12345-user)

Or to ignore messages from blocked users, just add:

(add-hook 'telega-chat-insert-message-hook 'telega-msg-ignore-blocked-sender)

To view recent messages that has been ignored use M-x telega-ignored-messages RET command.

How to contribute

Join our Telegram group to discuss the development of telega.el .

Submitting issues is exceptionally helpful.

License

telega.el is licensed under GNU GPL version 3.

FAQ

Q: I have this error while installing telega

Cannot open load file: No such file or directory, visual-fill-column

A: telega.el depends on visual-fill-column package, please install it first. This package is available from MELPA

Q: I have this error while running telega

(error "Invalid image type ‘svg’")

and/or

(error "Invalid image type ‘imagemagick’")

A: telega.el requires Emacs with SVG and ImageMagick support. SVG support in Emacs is done using librsvg library. As to imagemagick, you will need libmagickcore-dev and libmagickwand-dev packages installed. But unfortunately Emacs recently disabled imagemagick support by default (see https://lists.gnu.org/r/emacs-devel/2018-12/msg00036.html ). So you need to compile Emacs by hand, specifying --with-imagemagick flag to ./configure script.

Telega won't depend on imagemagick in future, since required image features has been added to newer Emacs, see https://lists.gnu.org/r/emacs-devel/2019-06/msg00242.html

Q: Does telega have proxy support?

A: Yes, use telega-proxies custom variable, for example:

(setq telega-proxies
      (list
       '(:server "1.2.3.4" :port 8080 :enable :false
                 :type (:@type "proxyTypeSocks5"
                               :username "rkn" :password "jopa"))
       '(:server "2.3.4.5" :port 8088 :enable t
                 :type (:@type "proxyTypeSocks5"
                               :username "rkn" :password "jopa"))
       ))

See C-h v telega-proxies RET for full range of proxy types.

Q: Stickers are not shown.

A: Make sure you have imagemagick support and please install webp package

Q: telega.el is unbearable slow.

A: You might be hitting into Emacs bug, described here https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-emacs/2020-01/msg00548.html

Also see https://github.com/zevlg/telega.el/issues/161

Q: There are no glyphs for some unicode characters.

A: Please install fonts-symbola package

Q: There is some formatting issues when some unicode characters are used.

A: Yes, partly. If character has full width of multiple ordinary chars you can tweak char-width-table . Add code like this to your init.el:

(setq telega-symbol-unread "  ")

(defun my-telega-load ()
  ;;    occupies two full chars, but (string-width "  ") returns 1
  ;; so we install custom widths to `char-width-table'
  (telega-symbol-set-width telega-symbol-unread 2)

  ;; ... other code
  )

(add-hook 'telega-load-hook 'my-telega-load)

There is also telega-symbol-widths custom variable, you might want to modify it.

Q: Is there erc-like chats tracking functionality?

A: Yes, set telega-use-tracking-for to non-nil.

Tracking is done only for opened chats, i.e. chats having corresponding chat buffer.

Its value is a (Chat Filter)[ https://github.com/zevlg/telega.el/blob/master/doc/telega-manual.org#chat-filters ].

For example, to enable tracking for chats with enabled notifications or for chats where you have unread mention, use:

(setq telega-use-tracking-for '(or unmuted mention))

Q: Is it possible to use telega in tty-only Emacs (aka emacs-nox)?

A: Yes, set telega-use-images to nil , before start.

Q: Is it possible to use markup in outgoing messages?

A: Yes, use C-u RET to send message with markup, also see telega-chat-use-markdown-version . Supported markup:

1. *bold text*
2. _italic text_
2.1) __underline text__    (only for v2)
2.2) ~strike through text~ (only for v2)
3. `inlined code`
4. ```<language-name-not-displayed>
   first line of multiline preformatted code
   second line
   last line```
5. [link text](http://actual.url)
6. [username](tg://user?id=<USER-ID>)"

Q: Is there manual for telega.el ?

A: We started to write https://github.com/zevlg/telega.el/blob/master/doc/telega-manual.org