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Telegram Amiga Alpha 0.0.98 was released on October 28, 2026. The native MTProto client for Amiga-family systems gains message reactions, per-chat notification rules and custom sounds. After 0.0.97 introduced notifications and popups, the next step is deciding which conversations may interrupt you and making the conversations themselves easier to follow.
There are still seven packages: AmigaOS 3 for 68020 and above, AmigaOS 3 for the plain 68000 with the TUI only, AmigaOS 4, MorphOS, AROS i386, AROS x86_64 and AROS ARM64. This is an alpha, not an already-declared beta or an official Telegram product.
Reactions: read them, add them, take them back
Reactions appear under a message bubble with their counts; your own is highlighted. The message’s context menu opens React…, a grid of ten common reactions in two rows. Choosing your reaction again removes it. In groups and channels with restrictions, the grid follows the reactions Telegram allows, in the specified order; if none are allowed, the status line explains that.
Not every chat sends an event when another person reacts. Every 20 seconds, the open conversation therefore also requests the reaction state of visible messages that are not yours and already have reactions. Private chats have a different update path, which is handled too, including messages containing photos or formatted text.
Custom and paid reactions are shown as a simple mark rather than reproduced in full. The TUI displays counts and adds /react <id> <name>. It is practical support with explicit boundaries.
Per-chat notifications, not indiscriminate noise
A chat muted on Telegram, including from your phone, stays silent here until its mute expires: no sound and no popup, but the counters still update. Expiry is compared with Telegram’s clock, so it does not depend on an Amiga having a working clock battery.
- Direct conversations may notify; groups and channels remain quiet until you enable them.
- Messages sent silently and your own messages sent from another device do not ring.
- The chat open in front of you never rings. Other chats may notify even while the window is in the foreground.
- The same chat waits at least half a minute between sounds.
Right-clicking a chat row opens its own menu: remove it from the list, mute or unmute it and, for groups and channels, enable or disable ringing. Elsewhere in the window, the ordinary application menu remains available. Group popups also name the sender when known; channel posts, anonymous admins and unknown names retain the text preview alone.
A different sound for each conversation
Settings > Notifications > Sound file… selects the global sound. A chat’s menu can override it or restore the default. The sounds/ drawer contains six original IFF 8SVX sounds: Bell, Blip, Ding, Drop, Marimba and Pop. Other formats, such as WAV, depend on the datatypes installed on the system.
The file may be up to 1 MB, and playback lasts no more than three seconds while the client keeps working. Beep must be enabled and the chat must qualify to ring; the TUI uses the same sound with /bell enabled. Selecting a sound plays a preview, while Built-in chime restores the short internal notification.
On AROS, output follows the unit configured in Prefs/AHI. This matters on the Raspberry Pi, where the sound datatype’s automatically chosen route is not necessarily HDMI. On Amigas without AHI, the built-in Paula chime is also fixed: it could previously be silent. If there is no sound device, the screen still flashes.
Dates, emoticons and more faithful colours
The transcript separates days with Today, Yesterday or a date, including the year when necessary. Consecutive messages from one sender no longer remain grouped across a change of day. An older page opened in the TUI starts with its date as well.
Typed emoticons such as :) and :D can become emoji when standing alone and followed by a space or Send. Backspace immediately afterwards restores the original characters; Settings > Emoticons become emoji disables conversion. Underscores, asterisks, backquotes and tildes remain literal characters instead of accidentally switching the style of the rest of a message.
On screens with more than 256 colours, where the graphics path supports it, avatars and emoji use their own colours, smooth scaling and edges blended into the background. Paletted screens, slower 68k machines and unsupported cases retain the pen-based path. Emoji are also no longer cut in half in names, messages and previews.
Fixes below the surface
Each request now keeps its own temporary file in T:. Switching chats while a photo loads and a file is being sent should no longer cross those files and expose progress lines in the Shell. AROS also stops attempting to open the nonexistent /dev/urandom for every encrypted message; MorphOS checks availability once. This avoids repeated, pointless work rather than removing the internal random generator.
Login now states a basic requirement clearly: you need an existing Telegram account. The client signs in to that account; it cannot create a new one.
One platform warning remains: AROS x86_64 with an e1000 network card. The release notes attribute intermittent crashes to the system driver, with reproductions that contain no Telegram code. The fix is described as upstream work: check that your installed AROS image includes it before treating the issue as resolved. Another network-card model is suggested in the meantime; declaring every AROS installation fixed would be misleading.
Downloads and requirements
All seven 0.0.98 packages are available on GitHub and Aminet. Each entry below is for the indicated platform; the plain-68000 package contains the text client only.
| Platform | GitHub 0.0.98 | Aminet 0.0.98 |
|---|---|---|
| AmigaOS 3.x, 68020+ | GitHub / ZIP | Aminet / LHA |
| AmigaOS 3.x, 68000 (TUI) | GitHub / ZIP | Aminet / LHA |
| AmigaOS 4.x | GitHub / ZIP | Aminet / LHA |
| MorphOS | GitHub / ZIP | Aminet / LHA |
| AROS i386 ABIv0 | GitHub / ZIP | Aminet / LHA |
| AROS x86_64 | GitHub / ZIP | Aminet / LHA |
| AROS ARM64, Raspberry Pi | GitHub / ZIP | Aminet / LHA |
The AmigaOS 3 GUI needs a 68020 or better. The plain-68000 package calls for about 2 MB of free Fast RAM and a first login prepared on a faster machine or in an emulator. AROS x86_64 requires a system matching the project’s trunk SDK: AROS One v0.38 pairs a different kickstart and is not a compatible target. ARM64 requires native AROS images for Raspberry Pi 4, 400 or 5, from the August 22, 2026 image onwards.
For this article, all seven release tags were checked against the same commit, GitHub downloads were checked against their SHA-256 digests and ZIP integrity, and Aminet versions and downloads were verified. These are not fresh runtime tests on seven systems: hardware and VM validation reported by the project remains release documentation.
In short
- 0.0.98 adds reactions, respected mute settings and per-chat sounds.
- Dates, emoticon conversion and more faithful graphics improve reading without imposing the same cost on every machine.
- It remains an alpha with seven distributions and explicit platform limitations.
- The road to beta 0.1, including the Amigram name, is a plan rather than today’s download.
The complete journey from Bot API probes to this release is in the Telegram Amiga development diary, rewritten in full and brought up to 0.0.98.