This hasn’t been officially announced yet (will probably be announced with the release of Telegram 7.7), but a new ticket appeared on the bugs & suggestions platform introducing two new web clients:
From the ticket:
Can they replace the native app I’m using on my device?
Both of the new versions support most of the features you are likely need for your day-to-day Telegram usage.
Why are there two versions?
Because we believe in internal competition. Both new apps work equally well on mobile and desktop devices.
They are likely the outcome of the JavaScript contest that took place during 2020 on multiple rounds. One of these two apps is going to replace the long-dead old web client
interesting 🤔
anyone know why they’re pursuing it? bc of their legitimate grudge against the app store they’re introducing a proper web app? but PWAs are crippled on ios anyway…
I think the main purpose of the JavaScript contest was to replace the old web app, that fell unmaintained a few years ago, probably because the developer has been working on some other stuff at Telegram. And therefore I still think the main purpose of these two apps is to finally phase out the old one.
But yes, they put great emphasis on the fact that these two apps can possibly replace the native phone app, if you want them to. I think Durov’s growing annoyed at the content restrictions the AppStore and the PlayStore require app developers to follow. Telegram has started to limit a lot of channels on Android too lately, sometimes even motivating the restriction with a label saying that the chat is blocked to comply with the store policies. It’s no suprise that these two webapps have been announced shortly after Telegram started to distribute the Android app apk in their website too.
A comment from Durov in his channel (January):
Yes, the Apple-Google duopoly poses a much bigger problem for freedoms than Twitter (I covered that in detail last summer https://t.me/durov/122). Apple is the more dangerous of the two because it can completely restrict which apps you use, while on Android you can install self-hosted apps as APKs. That’s why I’ve been urging users to switch from iOS to Android - that’s the least they can do to retain access to a free flow of information.
As for iOS, we are working on a feature-rich web app which will run in Safari almost as smoothly as the native app. Still not the same thing, but would work in extreme cases if for any reasons .
Having said that, we don’t see why Apple or Google can be unhappy with Telegram, so this discussion is purely hypothetical.
I also personally suspect that the PlayStore review of the 7.7 update (which has been pushed to the website more than a week ago) is taking this much because Google might be reviewing the quality of Telegram’s content filters for android users. They probably decided to release the webapps and the web apk build so they can mention that you can overcome content restrictions using these tools in the next update’s blogpost.
