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Mercurygram

Telegram is a messaging app with a focus on speed and security. It’s superfast, simple and free.

This is an unofficial fork of Telegram App for Android, maintained by rebasing Mercurygram patches and forward-ported de-googling patches on top of upstream Telegram.

Mercurygram publishes two kinds of build. The tag shape tells you which:

Snapshots and pre-stable builds both publish two APKs per release: a Release-flavor APK that updates the stable package side and a Debug-flavor APK (filename infixed with -debug) that updates the .beta package side. Filenames: Mercurygram--.apk (Release) and Mercurygram-debug--.apk (Debug). Stable installs pull the Release APK via the in-app updater opt-in toggle; .beta installs pull the Debug APK.

Versions order naturally: 12.7.3.0.5 < 12.7.3.1 < 12.7.3.1.42 < 12.7.3.2.

Open the link on your Android device and the app source pre-fills with the right release filter and package ID.

Stable — package it.belloworld.mercurygram. Tagged stable releases only.

Beta — package it.belloworld.mercurygram.beta. Per-push snapshots (X.Y.Z.M.K, M ≥ 1) and pre-stable test builds (X.Y.Z.0.K).

Stable users: the in-app updater can be opted in to pre-release updates from Settings → Mercurygram → Updates → Accept pre-release updates. Enabling shows a warning dialog; once installed a pre-release you can only turn the toggle off again after upgrading to a stable (4-part) release.

• Add ID in Profile Info
• Add a menu in Notifications and Sounds in order to set the UnifiedPush distributor. The same menu may be long-clicked to inspect recent UnifiedPush notification/decryption stats
• Add a menu in Notifications and Sounds in order to set the UnifiedPush WebPush gateway
• Add toggle setting in Chat Settings to start video messages with rear-facing camera
• Add toggle setting in Chat Settings to hide keyboard on chat scroll
• Add toggle setting in Chat Setting to hide "All Chats" tab (feature from NekoX)
• Add administrators item in group/channel info
• Add toggle setting in Debug Menu to enable Message Details menu
• Add toggle setting in Debug Menu to disable Unified Push support
• Add toggle setting in Debug Menu to disable Secure Flags. This option must only be used for debugging
• Add toggle setting in Debug Menu to remove sponsored messages and proxy sponsor banners. This option must only be used for debugging
• Re-add Monet themes (#31)
• Disabled DOH resolving since this leaks your used proxy to Google and it's not needed since Android DNS over TLS should be used instead
• Unlock premium app icons for anybody
• Unlock 5 accounts (was 3) and remove premium check for number of accounts
• Add toggle setting in Chat Settings to send large photos (2560px instead of 1280px)
• Telegram application icons are replaced with hermes wing (Created by Anthony Ledoux from Noun Project)

These patches were originally derived from the Telegram-FOSS effort, but Mercurygram now forward-ports and rebases them directly onto upstream Telegram.

Replacement of non-FOSS, untrustworthy or suspicious binaries or source code:

• Do location sharing with OpenStreetMap via MapLibre instead of Google Maps
• Use Noto emoji set instead of Apple's emoji
• Google/Firebase push services replaced with UnifiedPush
• SECURITY: BoringSSL, FFmpeg, libvpx, dav1d, and tde2e are built from source at compile time instead of shipping upstream prebuilts

Removal or stubbing of non-FOSS, untrustworthy or suspicious binaries or source code and their functionality:

• Google Play Services / Firebase dependencies from the default Mercurygram build and manifests
• Google Maps / Fused Location providers are stubbed out and replaced by MapLibre / Android location providers
• Google Wallet, SafetyNet, Play Integrity, and related proprietary verification pieces are stubbed out through local compatibility classes
• Google Cast integration
• Google ML Kit / Google Vision integrations, including barcode and face detection paths
• Android passkey support is disabled as Telegram servers verify the APK signature, which fails for unofficial forks

Other:

• Added the ability to parse locations from intents containing a geo:,, string
• Force static map previews from Telegram
• No content restrictions

Mercurygram adds MTProto-layer mitigations that upstream Telegram and Telegram-FOSS do not ship:

• Reduce network tracking — opt-in toggle at Settings → Mercurygram → Privacy. Defends against the passive auth_key_id fingerprint described in the OCCRP / Symbolic Software review of May 2026 (review-confirms-telegram-tracking-vulnerability). MTProto's outer obfuscation2 stream cipher is recoverable from on-wire bytes (the AES-CTR keys are derived from the visible 64-byte TCP-handshake bytes via a public algorithm), so a passive observer with a full pcap from connection start can decode the obfuscation and read the 8-byte auth_key_id at the front of every MTProto frame. That id is stable enough to correlate a device across IP/network changes even though message contents stay encrypted. When the toggle is on:
  • Every default-network change (Wi-Fi ↔ cellular, VPN flip, IP rebind) forces a fresh PFS temp-key handshake so auth_key_id rotates across network boundaries (MgNetworkChangeWatcher + native ConnectionsManager::rotateTempAuthKeys()).
  • The CDN-redirect (upload.fileCdnRedirect) path is refused once per file download and the request is reissued against the main DC, keeping the long-lived permanent auth_key_id (which CDN nodes use because PFS is off there) off the wire.
  • TEMP_AUTH_KEY_EXPIRE_TIME is shortened from 24 h to 1 h via a runtime variable, with a 1h → 6h → 24h ladder that bumps the TTL on a bindTempAuthKey ENCRYPTED_MESSAGE_INVALID rejection — protects against a future server-side policy tightening without logging the user out (when the ladder exhausts the toggle auto-disables). Probed lower bound on DC2 in 2026-05 is 60 s; 1 h leaves a 60× safety margin. See scripts/probe-temp-key-ttl.py to re-measure the floor after a rebase.
• Tor with idle auto-stop (optional companion APK) — Settings → Mercurygram → Privacy → Use Tor. Tor support now lives in a separate, optional companion APK on F-Droid (Mercurygram Tor Plugin, package it.belloworld.mercurygram.plugin.tor); toggling Use Tor prompts to install the plugin if it isn't present. The plugin runs the same daemon (vendored from tor-android, built reproducibly from source) in its own process — only the packaging changes. MTProto is pinned to a loopback SOCKS5 the moment the toggle flips so direct connections cannot leak even before bootstrap finishes. Tor shuts down after a debounced idle window (default 5 min, configurable) once the app is backgrounded and no VoIP / downloads are active, and restarts on resume or on a UnifiedPush fallback wake — keeping battery cost in the same range as upstream Telegram while the user is not actively using the app. Telegram still sees the Tor exit; latency-sensitive features (calls) may suffer.
• Hidden accounts — additional accounts can be marked hidden behind the existing passcode (Settings → Mercurygram → General → Hidden accounts); they don't appear in the account switcher when the passcode is locked.
• Anti-delete & anti-edit message history — opt-in per-account (Settings → Mercurygram → General → Save deleted & edited messages). Server-deleted messages stay in the chat as a grayed-out ghost; edited messages keep all previous versions accessible from the message menu. Self-destructing / TTL / secret-chat messages are never recorded (api/terms §1.4).
• De-googled UnifiedPush + WebPush — no Google Play Services / Firebase Cloud Messaging anywhere in the binary; push notifications use UnifiedPush with end-to-end WebPush encryption (aesgcm Draft 4 — decrypted locally; the gateway only sees ciphertext). See UnifiedPush WebPush gateway.
• DoH resolving disabled — upstream Telegram falls back to Google DoH when normal DNS fails, which leaks the user's proxy/IP to Google. Mercurygram drops that path; Android's system DNS-over-TLS handles the same encryption-in-transit need without the leak.
• Native crypto built from source — BoringSSL, FFmpeg, libvpx, dav1d, and tde2e are compiled from source at build time instead of shipping upstream prebuilts (no opaque third-party binaries in the APK).

In order to have reliable notifications, it may be necessary to set battery optimization to Not optimized for Mercurygram (no, it won't use more battery).

Background Connections setting is not necessary and uses lot of battery, so please disable it when you use UnifiedPush.

If you set Battery optimization to Not optimized, Keep-Alive Service will be not necessary.

See dontkillmyapp for more information.

If you can't/want set Battery optimization to Not optimized and you don't receive notifications after a while (more than 30 minutes) please enable Keep-Alive Service instead.

Mercurygram uses Telegram's WebPush notifications through UnifiedPush.

When the app registers with a UnifiedPush distributor, it generates its own WebPush keypair and auth secret, then sends Telegram a WebPush token in JSON form:

<div class="highlight highlight-source-json notranslate position-relative overflow-auto" dir="auto" data-snippet-clipboard-copy-content="{"endpoint":"/aesgcm?e=","keys":{"p256dh":"...","auth":"..."}}">

{"endpoint":"/aesgcm?e=","keys":{"p256dh":"...","auth":"..."}}