Install And Use Official Telegram Desktop Client In Linux

Telegram is a cloud based, fast, encrypted messaging service that let’s you share unlimited data. Telegram emphasizes on privacy and unlike its competitor WhatsApp, it has desktop client available for all the platforms, in addition to clients for all major mobile OS. In this article we shall see how to install official Telegram in Linux.

I am using Ubuntu 14.04 in this tutorial but the steps mentioned here should be applicable to any other Linux OS be it Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Fedora, Arch Linux etc.

Install Telegram desktop client in Linux

First thing first. Go to the download page of Telegram website and download the source code for your 32 bit or 64 bit system. Once you have downloaded the source code, I presume it is in the Download directory, use the following commands to install Telegram desktop app:

cd ~/Downloads
tar -xJvf tsetup.0.7.2.tar
sudo mv Telegram /opt/telegram
sudo ln -sf /opt/telegram/Telegram /usr/bin/telegram

To explain the commands above, what we just did was to go to Downloads directory and extract the compressed code. The files are extracted in a directory named Telegram. Next what we did was to move this directory to a new directory named telegram in /opt and then made a soft link in /usr/bin so that you can run the program.

Install Telegram desktop client in Ubuntu 14.04 via PPA

If you prefer PPAs, there is an unofficial PPA from Noobslab which you can use to install in Ubuntu and other Ubuntu based Linux distributions such as Linux Mint, Linux Lite etc. Open a terminal and use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noobslab/apps
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install telegram-desktop

How to use Telegram in Linux

Now, once you have installed Telegram, to run it, just write telegram in terminal to start the app. For the first time you’ll be greeted with a welcome screen like this:

If you are using Ubuntu Unity, I suggest that you ‘lock it to the launcher’ so that you can easily access it from Unity Launcher and won’t have to type the command every time. Of course, at first run, you’ll have to verify your phone number.

The interface looks clean in Ubuntu. And you can use same set emoticons that are in the mobile app. Here is a screenshot of a conversation between me and my girlfriend. Actually, it’s me only who sent these messages from her iPhone :)

When the desktop app is running, you’ll get desktop notifications for new messages. At present, it doesn’t use native Unity or Gnome notifications. But hey! At least there are notifications.

It is great to see more messaging tools coming to Linux. Viber was perhaps one of the first popular messaging service to release a Linux client. I hope other messaging services will follow the suit.