Third Party Telegram App Being Developed For Windows 10

Earlier this year, Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, made an announcement on Twitter about his company’s plans to develop and release a UWP version of the popular privacy-focused messaging application. Seven months after the announcement, we have yet to see any version of the app.

Fortunately, a group of app developers are working together to build a third-party version of the Telegram app. The initiative is open-source, and those interested in keeping up with its development can visit the app’s GitHub page to learn a lot more.

The app, known as Unigram, is coming along pretty well. The development team said they faced a few issues with the Windows 10 Threshold SDK and as such, were forced to wait for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update SDK. As they are still waiting, only certain features of the app can be worked on until Microsoft delivers the goods.

Here’s what one of the developers had to say via Reddit:

The current version of Unigram doesn’t have a chat page, but that’s something the developers are working on. Furthermore, it’s possible to receive messages and reply from notifications, so that’s definitely a good start.

We faced some issues with SDK of Windows 10 Threshold release so we had to wait for Windows 10 Anniversary Update’s (RedStone_1) SDK.

We are still waiting for official release of this SDK. In the meantime, we have been working on things which are not dependent on SDK so work is going smooth.

Right now, everything all boils down to whether the Unigram developers can release their third-party Telegram app before the official app is released to the Windows Store. Seeing as Durov promised fans months ago and failed to deliver, we are now pinning our hopes on Unigram.