Inugram

there are many tga forks, but this one is mine

a very cool and dog-pilled fork (or rather, patchset, see below) of Telegram Android

primary goals

this fork is primarily intended for long-term Telegram users who want a clean and robust exparience without all the bloat.

you can expect:

• removed annoyances
• a lot of qol features
• ui tweaks to make it look prettier and cleaner
• opinionated defaults

all that while still allowing users to disable our custom tweaks to (mostly) achieve the stock experience (but why?)

why should i use this over whatevergram?

i don't know. maybe you shouldn't.

inugram exists primarily for my own personal use, because i got tired of the bloat (and lack of transparency) that most forks are, and latest stock is borderline unusable. and apparently my vision for a good ui/ux client and declutter aligns well with many long-term telegram users who spend hours in the app daily, so here we are.

feel free to fork this repo and remove patches you don't like or add your own, or even "steal" the features you like to your own fork. i really don't care.

patchset, not a fork

unlike most alternative clients based on Telegram Android, Inugram is a patchset. it is not a fork in the traditional sense, but rather a collection of patches applied to the stock codebase.

a few advantages of such approach:

• easier rebase, since the stock code vs fork code is clearly separated
• easier to audit the changes, since the modifications are all in one place
• easier for bugfixes to land upstream (although i dont think they really care)

the patchset is managed using stgit and a few supporting scripts in scripts/.

repo layout

• src/kotlin: our custom Kotlin code
• src/res: our custom resources
• patches/: stock patches
• series: patch apply order
• upstream-commit: pinned Telegram commit
• worktree/: local Telegram checkout, gitignored

patches are grouped by their type:

type	description
bugfix	fixes a bug in the upstream codebase
feature	adds a contained feature (one or more, if they're related) to the app (qol, ui tweaks, etc.)
debloat	hiding stock "features" behind a toggle. you could also call it "un-feature"
hooks	small hooks into the various parts of the app to jump into our custom kotlin code for easier maintenance
misc	everything else, stuff like build support and such

each patch strives to be small and self-contained. as a rule of thumb, we should be able to remove a patch and still have the app build, although this is not always possible.

in stgit, patch names are delimited using double underscore, e.g. patches/misc/whatever.patch becomes misc__whatever in stgit.

contributing

contributions are welcome, but before implementing a new feature please ping me to discuss it

requirements: Node.js 20+, git, stg

pnpm install
pnpm run setup

this will clone the upstream into worktree/ and set up stgit in it, along with all the current patches. you can then simply open (not import!) worktree/ in Android Studio and start hacking. it should build right away.

adding a new patch

stg new misc__my-patch -m 'my patch description' # to create a patch
# ...do whatever you need in worktree/...
stg refresh # to "commit" the worktree changes into the topmost patch
pnpm run export # to export stgit into patches/

modifying an existing patch

# option 1: edit the patch without re-ordering
stg goto misc__my-patch
# ...do whatever you need in worktree/...
stg refresh
stg push -a # go back to the topmost patch
pnpm run export

# option 2: push the patch to the top of the stack
stg float misc__my-patch
# ...do whatever you need in worktree/...
stg refresh
pnpm run export

for non-trivial changes the latter is preferred, since it reduces the chance of conflicts later on, and also lets you test your changes next to everything else.

acknowledgements

• the original Telegram Android - the basis for this fork
• a bunch of features were ported from Nekogram and NagramX
• src/res/drawable/icplaceholder.jpg is a blurred version of this artwork by Chobles

this project is llm-assisted: a bunch of the code and the patches were (and will be) written by claude. this doesn't mean it's "ai slop", i still review all the code myself, but im not an android dev by any means so it might not be perfect. ai-assisted contributions are welcome as long as you disclose that in the pr.

if you have an issue with that - go make your own fork.

license

abolish copyright law tbh, but let's just say the repo is licensed under MIT