Forkgram is an open-source macOS messaging client built directly on the Telegram Desktop codebase, extended by community contributors to expose capabilities and interface options the official app has been slow to ship.
What is Forkgram?
Forkgram is an independently maintained build of Telegram's desktop client, published openly on GitHub, that goes further than what Telegram's own team ships in the official binary. The underlying protocol, the account, the chats — everything familiar stays exactly in place. What changes is the surface: more control over the interface, additional customisation levers, and UI tweaks shaped by actual user demand rather than a centralised product roadmap.
Crucially, Forkgram logs into your existing Telegram account. There is no migration, no new phone number, no contact export. You sign in, your history syncs from Telegram's servers, and you're immediately looking at a client that simply does more.
What does Forkgram do best?
Forkgram earns its keep in the details. Core messaging — file transfers, voice and video calls, channels, bots, group chats — works exactly as it does in the official client, because it is the same codebase at its foundation. The difference surfaces at the edges: additional theme engine controls, finer notification granularity, tweaked keyboard behaviour, and the ability to suppress or activate interface elements that the stock app hard-codes as immovable.
I think of it the way I think about switching from Apple Mail to Mimestream — you're not abandoning the ecosystem, you're getting a cockpit with more dials. Forkgram installs via Homebrew Cask, which means updates sit alongside the rest of your developer toolchain rather than depending on an in-app update mechanism you have to remember to trigger.
One honest limitation: because Forkgram tracks a living upstream repository, there can be short windows after a significant Telegram Desktop release where the fork lags by a few days. In practice this has rarely been a real problem, but it is worth knowing before you commit entirely.
Is Forkgram free?
Forkgram is completely free — no subscription, no premium tier, no advertising. The project lives on GitHub under an open-source licence, which means the entire codebase is auditable before you ever run a single binary on your machine. That is a meaningful distinction from most messaging clients, where "free" still means trusting a closed-source binary.
The underlying Telegram service remains free for personal use, and any Telegram Premium subscription you already hold carries over without any additional cost or reconfiguration.
Who should use Forkgram?
The ideal Forkgram user is already deep inside Telegram — active across multiple group chats, managing one or more channels, or relying on it as a daily professional communication layer — and finds the official macOS client just slightly too constrained. Developers who already manage their app ecosystem through Homebrew will feel immediately at home with the install-and-update cycle.
If you open Telegram once a day to message a few friends, the official client is entirely sufficient. But if Telegram sits open alongside Raycast, CleanShot X, or Tot from morning to midnight, and you want it to bend to your habits rather than Telegram's roadmap, Forkgram is worth a ten-minute trial. It is also a considered choice for anyone who wants to audit exactly what is running on their machine — the open-source nature of the project provides a transparency the official binary simply cannot match.
What are the best Forkgram alternatives?
The most direct alternative is official Telegram Desktop, maintained by Telegram's own engineering team. It ships security patches fastest, has the largest support surface, and is the sensible default if you are not actively seeking a community build. For the majority of users it is entirely sufficient.
If you want a unified inbox spanning Signal, WhatsApp, iMessage, and Telegram simultaneously, Beeper (now part of Automattic) is worth exploring, though it introduces its own architectural trade-offs around message routing. Signal Desktop is the right answer if end-to-end encryption across every message is your primary criterion and you can live with a far more minimal feature surface.
For Mac users inside managed corporate environments, the App Store version of Telegram is sandboxed and subject to Apple's review process — a meaningful distinction in environments with strict software governance requirements where sideloaded binaries face scrutiny.
