Submitted 3 months ago by matcha_addict@lemy.lol to selfhosted@lemmy.world
The telegram app has a very nice interface, but I want to use a self hosted xmpp chat server.
Is there maybe a fork of telegram that makes it work with a self hosted xmpp server? I would imagine that this is possible.
If not, is there anything that at least gets close to how nice telegram UI is?
Telegram isn’t open source, so I don’t think you’re going to find forks of it.
Telegram client is open source, and there are many forks of it with enhanced features (forkgram, nekogram, etc.)
You are asking about the server, not the apps.
This is another “I WANT EVERYTHING FOR CHEAP!” post in this thread, but with lower effort because this is easily searchable to find the answer.
OP, I understand what you look for, but that’s not easy task. From my limited knowledge of apps development, achieving what you requested would likely be:
This is akin to swaping to a new engine for a car, with incompatible mounts. Diffcult to execute, and (I believe) low interest. You can try if you got the skills. I don’t and even I have, I will just use SimpleX which fits my needs.
In theory you could use Telegram X and reimplement the tdlib API to create such a client. It wouldn’t be the main Telegram Android app, but Telegram X is in someways even nicer.
Just use Conversations. It’s fine.
Back up a second. Reread your question.
You want a bridge. Like Jabagram or Emulsion. But there’s a limited set of features that will work. For example, reactions or group admin on telegram can’t be easily replicated over xmpp. And, in any case, we are talking more about having messages and media on both rooms, on either side, replicated. That way, users on telegram (e.g. your friend) can talk to users on xmpp (e.g. you). Reliability for bridges is not good, there are glitches and messages that doesn’t make it to the other side, whichever that is. I’d say you prefer to self-host xmpp with cherry-picked extensions, like snikket.org
If you don’t strictly speaking need XXMP, you might want to checkout Jami which is a peer-to-peer based chat app with a fairly polished UI. It still definitely feels like beta software at times though, so more of a “be aware of it and check in on it” than “actively use this for all of your chats” sort of thing.
poVoq@slrpnk.net 3 months ago
I wondered about this before and apparently the Telegram client is terrible spaghetti code under the hood, making this kind of ideas not feasible.
You might like Monocles Chat though, which is an Android XMPP client with a somewhat nicer looking interface.
There is also the work in progress Moxxy client, which is a from ground up new XMPP client written in Flutter. It seems to take some interface inspiration from Telegram, but to be honest, it isn’t anywhere near to be fully usable and development has been slow in recent months.
matcha_addict@lemy.lol 3 months ago
Monocle looks really nice! I’ll try it out, it may be exactly what I need. Thanks :)