Telegram Amiga Alpha 0.0.96, released on 11 October 2026, is not about adding a conspicuous feature while leaving slower machines behind. It improves the work that decides whether the client is usable: typing, chat redraws, menus, avatars, connections and Workbench handling. A seventh distribution also arrives, containing the text client for an unaccelerated 68000.
Typing on a stock A1200 without waiting for every letter
Since 0.0.8, only AfA OS redrew the text field alone after each key. On other systems, a stock A1200 with a 14 MHz 68EC020 redrew the whole window and could take about three seconds per letter. Version 0.0.96 copies only the text-field strip to the screen while its height stays the same. If a full redraw takes more than 300 ms, incoming messages, typing notices and photo steps wait for a two-second pause before updating the window; fast systems still show them immediately.
The improvement goes beyond the input field. In a busy chat, measuring every line again and searching byte by byte for emoji made a redraw take about six seconds on a cycle-exact A1200; the changelog now reports about 0.9 seconds with the same line breaks. Each message also keeps its calculated height, keyed to its text, width, font and emoji setting, so loaded messages need not all be laid out twice. The developers describe a case that previously needed about 8,500 measurements for 70 visible texts. When someone starts or stops typing, only the chat header is redrawn. A slow redraw requested while you type waits for a pause matched to the previous redraw, up to ten seconds.
Menus and avatars no longer steal the keyboard
The context menu redraws only its own box: on an A1200, highlighting another item no longer requires a whole-window redraw that cost about three seconds. Avatars initially appear as coloured initials and are prepared during idle moments, not while you type or have a menu open. Below the 68040, the client uses the chat list’s 20×20 size and reduced JPEG decoding; processed images are kept as avatars/*.rgb files, avoiding another decode at the next start. Processing begins only after two seconds without input and redraws the chat list, followed by one final full redraw.
The new Settings > Show avatars option can turn profile pictures off in the list and header. Coloured initials remain, but pictures are not downloaded or processed. Avatars start off disabled on 68k CPUs below the 68040 and on native AGA, ECS and OCS screens; elsewhere they start on. The preference is saved in data/telegram-avatars.txt.
Palettes, windows and Workbench
On 32- or 64-colour AGA screens, yellow emoji faces could turn brown because artwork colours requested screen pens in an unhelpful order. The client now groups shades by tint and weights them by the pixels they cover: important colours claim pens first, then each shade uses the nearest available pen or a checkerboard of two colours. Truecolour screens are unchanged. The nearest-colour search used for avatars and photos is faster on 68k builds without changing the pens it chooses.
When the Workbench screen mode or palette changes, Telegram Amiga now closes its window on the screen-close warning and reopens it on the new screen, keeping chats and the connection. If another window prevents the change, it waits for the system to finish or cancel it. On AmigaOS 3 this requires screennotify.library in LIBS:; without that library, the old behaviour remains. OS4 and AROS receive the warning through Intuition, while MorphOS uses its screennotify.library. Using the client’s own screen avoids the issue.
A reopened window now restores the input field, unsent text and scroll positions correctly, preventing clicks from landing on a chat other than the one shown. The smallest window size is remembered too. On the login screen, phone number, code and password are vertically centred; message bubbles have more even spacing, including when emoji are enabled. On a 16-bit AmigaOS 4 Workbench, surfaces and fields regain distinct colours instead of blending into the background.
Clearer startup, network waits and downloads
The window appears immediately with the cached chat list and “Connecting to Telegram…” in the status bar while the connection proceeds. Previously, a stock A1200 on a stalled link could show nothing for about two and a half minutes. If the connection fails, the status bar explains why instead of printing the reason to a console that a Workbench launch does not have. Chats hidden from the list stay hidden offline.
On AmigaOS 3 and 4, opening a connection now has a 15-second limit, unless a particular step already sets a longer one. Network waits proceed in one-second intervals; after two seconds, closing the window or a Workbench reset warning can interrupt them. After repeated lost polls, the retry interval grows from five seconds to one minute, leaving the window usable between attempts.
Before downloading a file to RAM:, the client checks actual free memory and refuses the transfer if it cannot fit, showing the required and available sizes. That is better than reaching a partial file after minutes only to remove it. When a volume fills during a write, both the GUI and text client say at how many KB the transfer stopped. A volume that cannot report free space is still allowed to try.
Portable preferences and everyday fixes
When the inline-photo and emoji preferences agree with a machine’s automatic choice, they are now stored as auto. Copying a data drawer from a fast Amiga to an A1200 therefore no longer forces inline photos against the slower machine’s default. An explicit choice that differs from the default still travels with the drawer; an older file keeps its choice until the setting is changed once.
The GUI quits with Amiga+Q or its close gadget. A plain Q and an ESC pressed after cancelling typing no longer quit it by accident; ESC still abandons login on the login screen. On an Amiga without a battery-backed clock, message times no longer fall back to 00:00 when the clock starts in 1978. If it is too far from real time, the client uses Telegram’s clock and the time zone from Locale preferences, without automatic daylight-saving adjustment.
Seven packages, including the plain 68000
The new package for plain-68000 A500, A600, A1000, A2000 and CDTV machines contains the text client only, not the GUI. It is built to load in about 1.5 MB and run with roughly 2 MB of free Fast RAM. First login is done on a faster Amiga or in an emulator, then telegram-auth.bin and the data drawer are copied over. A test A600 with 2 MB Chip, 4 MB Fast and PCMCIA networking runs it. The AROS aarch64 package for Raspberry Pi 4, 400 and 5 is now on Aminet as well, alongside the other platforms.
Official downloads
- Aminet: AmigaOS 3.x, AmigaOS 4.x, MorphOS, AROS i386, AROS x86_64, AROS ARM64 and the 68000 text client.
- GitHub: AmigaOS 3.x release, 68000 release and MorphOS release.
The full changelog and README are in the GitHub repository. Follow the project’s history in the development diary; the previous release is covered in the 0.0.95 article.