Using the viewer

This page walks through the web viewer screen by screen. For signing in and sharing, see Logins, viewer accounts and share links. For colours, see Themes and wallpaper. For notifications, see Live updates and notifications.

Layout

The viewer has three panes:

• The sidebar on the left holds the chat list and search.
• The chat pane in the middle shows the messages of the open chat.
• The info panel on the right opens when you click the chat information button in the chat header.

The viewer only reads the archive. It never contacts Telegram. The interface is in English only.

VIEWER_TIMEZONE sets the time zone for every time the viewer shows. It defaults to Europe/Madrid. If the zone name is unknown, the viewer logs a warning and uses UTC.

On a desktop you can resize the sidebar and the info panel. Drag the handle between two panes, or focus the handle and press Left or Right to move it 16 px at a time.

Pane	Width
Chat list	300 to 960 px, a quarter of the window by default
Info panel	260 to 640 px, 320 px by default
Messages	always at least 360 px

Each browser remembers its own widths.

Chat list

The top of the sidebar shows folder tabs. All Chats comes first, then one tab per Telegram folder, with the folder's emoji or a folder icon and its chat count. The tabs only appear when the archive holds at least one folder. In All Chats, an Archived Chats row appears when you have archived chats in Telegram.

Chats load 50 at a time. Scroll down and the next 50 load. Each row shows ID: <id>, the chat's Telegram id.

When you can see more than one Telegram account, each row carries a chip with the account's label. See Multiple accounts.

The sidebar also shows Last backup with the time of the most recent backup. When the listener is running, the same line shows Real-time sync with a green dot.

Search

One field at the top of the sidebar searches chats and messages together. Results appear 300 ms after you stop typing.

• Chats match on title, first name, last name or username.
• Messages use full-text search that matches the start of words. The newest match comes first. Results load 20 at a time as you scroll, and the list stops at 5,000 with "Showing the first 5,000 matches".

Use Up and Down to move through both sections, Enter to open a result, and Esc to clear the field. A second Esc leaves the field.

A hit found in a voice transcript carries the label "Matched in the transcript".

If the archive has no full-text index yet, the message section says so. The index is created by the database migrations, which shipped in 8.3.0. The backup image applies them when its container starts. On a pip install, run telegram-archive migrate. A SQLite build without FTS5 keeps the older substring search.

You can paste a Telegram link into the field. A t.me/c/<id>/<msg> or t.me/<username>/<msg> link opens that message when the chat is in the archive. Otherwise the sidebar says "That link points at a chat this archive does not hold".

Inside an open chat, the search box in the chat header searches that chat only, with the same 300 ms delay.

Reading messages

Text

Messages keep their Telegram formatting: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, code, preformatted blocks, quotes and spoilers. Click a spoiler, or focus it and press Enter or Space, to reveal it.

Only http, https and tg links are clickable. Mentions are highlighted. Web addresses that start with http:// or https:// become links even without formatting. Email addresses become links when Telegram marked them as such.

A #hashtag or $CASHTAG opens a tag view with three tabs: This Chat, My Messages and All Chats.

Replies and forwards

A reply shows a quote of the message it answers. Click the quote to jump to the original.

A forward shows "Forwarded from" and the source. When the source chat is also in the archive, click the header to open the original message.

Albums

Photos and videos sent together render as one grid:

Items	Grid
2	two columns
3	two on top, one below
4	two by two
5 or more	three columns

The caption comes from whichever item carries it. The viewer renders only the first message of an album and does not show reactions on the other messages.

Media

• Round videos play in place as a circle, muted, while they are on screen. Click one to turn the sound on or off. They never open in the lightbox.
• GIFs loop while they are on screen and pause when you scroll away.
• Stickers in .webp show as images up to 200 px wide. Other stickers show the text "Animated Sticker".
• Polls and quizzes show each answer with a percentage bar and the total votes.
• Dice, venues, invoices, stories, giveaways, live locations and games show as a chip.
• Link previews show the archived card with site name, title, description and image.

When a file is not in the archive, the bubble says why. Why media is missing in the viewer lists each message and the setting behind it.

Voice messages and other audio can carry a transcript that opens under the player. See Voice transcription.

Reactions, edits and deletions

Reactions show as chips with the emoji and, when above one, the count.

An edited message shows "edited", or "edited(N)" when it was edited N times. Click it to open the Versions drawer, which lists up to 100 earlier texts.

A deleted message stays in place, faded, with a "deleted" marker. The archive only learns about deletions when the listener runs with LISTEN_DELETIONS=true or the backup runs with SYNC_DELETIONS_EDITS=true. Both are off by default. With DELETION_MODE=soft, the default, the row is kept and marked. With hard it is removed.

Service messages

Joins, title changes and other chat events show as centred pills. Click the name of the person who did it to open their details.

When a group was converted to a supergroup, a banner says "This group continues as a supergroup" or "Migrated from