No country: Add Telegram Support To Pidgin With Telegram Purple

Telegram Purple is a Pidgin (and other Libpurple-based messengers) plugin which adds support for Telegram.

The plugin is based on Telegram-cli, a full-featured terminal-based client for Telegram, and is in early (pre-alpha) development stages. Right now, it supports the following features:

chats / group-chats:

send / receive messages;
discover buddies/chats;
discover buddy state and info;

profile pictures: download and use profile pictures;

Update Nov 24, 2014: Telegram Purple was updated to version 0.5, receiving the following new features / changes:

display incoming photos;
respect received user and chat property updates;
support changing own profile picture;
support adding new contacts;
display service messages;
works with libpurple proxy settings.

Features which will probably be added to Telegram Purple in the future include:

encrypted chats;
picture, audio and video messages;
file transfers;
geolocation;
multiple accounts on one client;

If you're looking for a more featureful Telegram client for Linux desktops, see: Sigram and Telegram Unity WebApp.

Even though it lacks some important features for now, Telegram Purple has some advantages over stand-alone solutions, like the ones mentioned above: since you can use it with Pidgin, you don't have to open multiple chat clients and you have all your contacts in a single list. And since it's under heavy development, we'll hopefully see some of these missing features implemented soon.

Tip: to use the Telegram iOS or Android Emojis, download them from HERE, copy the Emoji folder to ~/.purple/smileys/ and select the new smiley theme from the Pidgin preference (Themes > Smiley Theme).

Install Telegram Purple plugin for Pidgin

To make it easier to install in Ubuntu / Linux Mint (and derivatives), I've packaged Telegram Purple and uploaded it to the main WebUpd8 PPA. Add the PPA and install the plugin using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8  sudo apt-get update  sudo apt-get install telegram-purple

If you don't want to add the PPA, you can download the Telegram Purple deb from HERE.

Arch Linux users can install the latest Telegram Purple from Git via AUR.

For other Linux distributions, check out the installation instructions available on Telegram Purple's GitHub page.

To report bugs or contribute to Telegram Purple, see its GitHub page.

Using Telegram Purple with Pidgin

Using Telegram Purple with Pidgin is pretty easy. After installing the plugin (see above), start Pidgin (restart it if it was already running) and from its menu select Accounts > Manager Accounts. Here, click "Add" and from the protocol drop-down list, select Telegram.

Next, enter your phone number under "Username" (including the country prefix) and click "Add":