Telegram is a messaging app with a focus on speed and security. It's superfast, simple and free.
Mercurygram Desktop is an unofficial, privacy and security focused fork of Telegram Desktop. It is the desktop counterpart of the Mercurygram Android client, built by rebasing Mercurygram patches on top of upstream Telegram Desktop. It connects to the regular Telegram API over the MTProto protocol while adding extra privacy mitigations (such as the secret-chat work in progress on this branch).
The source code is published under GPLv3 with OpenSSL exception, the license is available here.
Mercurygram Desktop is distributed through GitHub Releases for Windows, macOS and Linux. There is no association with Telegram FZ-LLC; do not report Mercurygram issues to upstream Telegram.
Note: because this is an unofficial fork, builds are signed with Mercurygram's own update keys and the in-app updater points at the Mercurygram release server, not Telegram's.
To build you must supply your own Telegram api_id / api_hash at configure time
(-D TDESKTOP_API_ID=… -D TDESKTOP_API_HASH=…); credentials are never committed.
See https://core.telegram.org/api/obtaining_api_id.
For a couple of reasons:
- Mercury is the Roman (and I'm Italian) god and the "messenger of the gods".
- The logo is a stylized 'F' representing his winged shoes, but it also resembles an 'F' in honor of Freddy Mercury.
The application icon is the hermes wing (created by Anthony Ledoux from the Noun Project).
- Qt 6 (LGPL) and Qt 5.15 (LGPL) slightly patched
- OpenSSL 3.2.1 (Apache License 2.0)
- WebRTC (New BSD License)
- zlib (zlib License)
- LZMA SDK 9.20 (public domain)
- liblzma (public domain)
- Google Breakpad (License)
- Google Crashpad (Apache License 2.0)
- GYP (BSD License)
- Ninja (Apache License 2.0)
- OpenAL Soft (LGPL)
- Opus codec (BSD License)
- FFmpeg (LGPL)
- Guideline Support Library (MIT License)
- Range-v3 (Boost License)
- Open Sans font (Apache License 2.0)
- Vazirmatn font (SIL Open Font License 1.1)
- Emoji alpha codes (MIT License)
- xxHash (BSD License)
- QR Code generator (MIT License)
- CMake (New BSD License)
- Hunspell (LGPL)
- Ada (Apache License 2.0)