tele is a terminal-native Telegram client designed for keyboard-driven workflows.
It speaks Telegram’s MTProto protocol through the pure-Go gotd/td library rather than relying on TDLib or a Python runtime. It supports everyday messaging, media viewing and playback, local history and extensive keyboard control.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Supports private chats, groups and channels.
- Handles replies, reactions, edits, forwarding and synchronised per-chat drafts.
- Provides Vim-inspired navigation with a movable per-message cursor.
- Offers optional mouse support for chat selection, pane focus and scrolling.
- Speaks MTProto through gotd/td without requiring TDLib.
- Builds as a static Go binary without cgo.
- Renders photos with Kitty graphics and an ANSI block-art fallback.
- Provides an in-app viewer for full-quality photos.
- Displays voice-message waveforms and plays voice messages internally.
- Uses pure-Go Opus/Ogg decoding with PulseAudio or PipeWire on Linux.
- Shows inline previews for videos, round videos and GIFs.
- Loops selected GIFs when optional ffmpeg support is available.
- Sends photos, videos, voice notes, music and documents from disk.
- Supports grouped album sending for multiple attachments.
- Stores local chat history in SQLite.
- Includes multiple themes that can respond to the terminal background.
- Allows context-specific key bindings, including multi-key chords.
- Uses YAML configuration with an in-app settings overlay.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, Windows and BSD systems.
Website: github.com/sorokin-vladimir/tele
Support:
Developer: Vladimir Sorokin
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
tele is written in Go. Learn Go with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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