Telegram portable setup guide for Windows and Linux

Running Portable Telegram on Windows

1. Download the official Telegram Desktop Windows portable version.

2. Extract the downloaded archive to a folder, for example:

C:\TelegramPortable

3. Close Telegram completely, including the Telegram icon in the Windows system tray.

4. Copy tdata folder into the same folder as Telegram.exe.

The folder structure must look like this:

C:\TelegramPortable\

├── Telegram.exe

└── tdata\

5. Start the portable version by double-clicking Telegram.exe.

Telegram should use the tdata folder in the portable directory. If the session is still valid and the folder is complete, it may open your existing account without asking you to log in again.

Do not place tdata inside another tdata folder. The correct path is:

C:\TelegramPortable\tdata

The incorrect path is:

C:\TelegramPortable\tdata\tdata

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Running Portable Telegram on Linux

1. Download and extract the official Telegram Desktop Linux archive.

2. Create a folder for the portable version:

mkdir -p ~/TelegramPortable

3. Copy tdata folder into the new folder:

cp -a /path/to/tdata ~/TelegramPortable/

Replace /path/to/tdata with the actual location of your tdata folder.

4. Make the Telegram executable:

chmod +x ~/TelegramPortable/Telegram/Telegram

5. Start Telegram with the portable data folder:

~/TelegramPortable/Telegram/Telegram -workdir "$HOME/TelegramPortable"

The folder structure must look like this:

TelegramPortable/

├── tdata/

└── Telegram/

└── Telegram

The -workdir option tells Telegram to use ~/TelegramPortable as its data directory. Telegram should then look for the session data here:

~/TelegramPortable/tdata

Make sure Telegram is completely closed before copying or replacing the tdata folder. Never share your tdata folder because it may contain your active Telegram login session.