Forkgram

Forkgram, also called Fork Client by its project, is an unofficial fork of Telegram for Android. It keeps Telegram’s chats, calls, channels and cloud account model, then adds interface and message-handling options. The project lists forwarding without quoting the original sender, jumping to the first message in a chat, more secret-chat self-destruct intervals, an archive pulldown option, unlimited local pinned chats and controls for large emoji, the in-app camera and parts of the chat list. We did not verify every README item through the interface.

This page covers F-Droid’s 13.1.1.0 64-bit ARM build, version code 723708. We matched the 40.2 MB APK to F-Droid’s signed index and inspected the fixed release commit and F-Droid recipe. We did not sign into Telegram or test calls and message delivery on a physical phone.

What changes, and where it connects

The project says it adds no telemetry, analytics, crash reporting or third-party network endpoints on top of upstream Telegram. The first three claims match our static review, but the endpoint claim does not describe every path in the fixed source. Chats still use Telegram’s proprietary service, account system and servers. F-Droid therefore marks it NonFreeNet. Secret chats retain Telegram’s device-specific encrypted mode; ordinary cloud chats remain part of Telegram’s cloud service.

When the app returns to the foreground, its updater can check a Telegram channel and fall back to GitHub’s releases API; in this F-Droid build that fallback repository value remains 0, so the request may simply fail. Location screens use OpenStreetMap MAPNIK tiles by default and can use Wikimedia or CARTO tiles. Optional user-configured features add more endpoints: DuckDuckGo translation, Cloudflare Workers AI transcription with the user’s token, link-rewriting services, UnifiedPush, and separate speech-to-text and language-model addresses for Voice Timecodes.

Forkgram’s additions include showing the original date on forwarded messages, a quick-share control for private-chat media, fuller subscriber counts, profile-photo upload dates and coloured recent-activity dots. It hides account names in the drawer as a project change and offers a control for hiding a chat’s avatar and title in the dialog list. The 13.1.1 source also adds a recent-photo and camera overlay, enabled by default and opened by holding the attachment button; an optional display of voice-message file sizes, which starts off; and a fix for an archive that could become unreachable when the All Chats tab was hidden. These are local presentation and handling changes, not anonymity from Telegram or other chat participants.

Voice Timecodes is different. It needs both a speech-to-text address and a language-model address. Automatic processing applies only to qualifying voice messages sent from this app, including messages the user sends into a channel. With those endpoints configured, a long-press action can process a message manually even while the automatic toggle is off. Either path uploads the audio to the configured transcription service, sends the resulting text to the configured language model and then edits the already-sent message’s caption with generated timecodes, which other chat participants can see.

The name also needs care. This F-Droid package is org.forkgram.messenger. The project itself publishes a GitHub build as org.forkclient.messenger.beta, signed with a different certificate. Both come from Forkgram, but they install as separate apps and cannot update one another in place.

F-Droid build and permissions

F-Droid’s recipe deletes prebuilt JNI output and rebuilds it. The upstream app does not link the Cast, Cronet and Interactive Media Ads modules that the recipe’s scanner cleanup names. The meaningful F-Droid changes remove Play Integrity, SafetyNet, Google credentials authentication and Google Play Services SMS verification. They do not remove Telegram infrastructure, map tiles, the updater fallback or server-supplied sponsored messages. F-Droid accordingly applies both Ads and NonFreeNet anti-feature labels.

The manifest has 69 permissions. Many are compatibility entries for launcher badges or optional Telegram features, but the meaningful set is still broad: contacts and call logs, phone state, camera, microphone, precise and background location, media files, notifications, overlays, biometrics and package installation. Android asks for dangerous permissions when a feature needs them; do not grant contacts, location, call integration or install access merely because the manifest lists them.

Our static scan found no known tracker SDKs. That finding concerns packaged libraries, not what Telegram’s servers learn from account and network activity. F-Droid signs this build with its own key, so it should be updated from the same signing channel.

About this file

• This is F-Droid’s source build of 13.1.1.0 for 64-bit ARM, signed with F-Droid’s key.
• It needs Android 6.0 or later and a Telegram account; it is not an official Telegram release.
• Its measured SHA-256 is 447b43f6c8cbea0e57839beafeb67a136d649fe6929ff7752853d38732e9d27e, matching F-Droid’s signed index.
• The source is GPL-2.0 or later. No known tracker SDKs were found, while F-Droid flags the app for Telegram-hosted ads and reliance on a proprietary network service.

Flagged by F-Droid:

• Ads: Shows advertising.
• NonFreeNet: Relies on or promotes a proprietary network service.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017).

Versions currently kept in the F-Droid repository. We host and check only the newest one. Full changelog.