Read Telegram public channels on your Mac — even when Telegram is blocked. No Telegram account, no VPN, no setup beyond installing the app.
What the firewall sees: Normal HTTPS connections to GitHub and Google — nothing that looks like Telegram.
Grab the latest Pigeon-X.Y.Z.dmg from the
Releases page, drag
the app to /Applications, and you're done. Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe).
The DMG is ad-hoc signed, so on first launch macOS will refuse with "can't be opened, developer cannot be verified". Clear the quarantine attribute once and it's done:
xattr -cr /Applications/Pigeon.appOr right-click the app in Finder → Open → Open anyway.
brew install xcodegen
git clone https://github.com/MaroMushii/Pigeon.git
cd Pigeon/mac
xcodegen generate
open Pigeon.xcodeprojThen hit ⌘R in Xcode. Requires Xcode 26.
Pigeon checks for updates automatically in the background. When a new version is available you'll see a prompt.
The app cannot install updates silently because it is not signed with an Apple Developer certificate — signing would require handing Apple identifying information, which conflicts with the privacy goals of this project. One manual install step per update is the deliberate trade-off.
- Add a channel: ⌘N, then paste a username (
durov), an@handle, or anyt.meURL. The sheet also lists a few popular channels you can add with one click. - Read posts: click a channel in the sidebar. Posts load in the main pane with text, images, video posters, view counts, and reactions. Each post is marked read once it scrolls into view.
- Auto-refresh: Pigeon polls in the background. Mirror-backed channels refresh every 5 minutes, on-demand channels every 2 minutes. ⌘R forces an immediate refresh.
- Unread badge: the dock icon shows the total number of unread posts across all channels. Channel rows in the sidebar carry their own count.
- Open a post: right-click → Open on telegram.org to view it in your browser. Telegram's preview pages are public — no login required.
There is no settings screen, no account, no sync.
- No Telegram account. Pigeon reads the same public preview pages
Telegram shows at
t.me/s/<channel>— scraped externally so your device never has to. - No analytics, no telemetry, no remote logging.
- Your channel list stays on your Mac, in
~/Library/Containers/dev.MaroMushii.Pigeon. - Network traffic is HTTPS-only, to GitHub and Google.
- No Apple Developer certificate. Signing the app would require submitting identifying information to Apple. Pigeon is ad-hoc signed specifically to avoid that.
Inspired by ircfspace/teleMirror — Pigeon borrowed the Google Translate proxy idea and the Telegram widget DOM selectors as starting points, and rebuilt everything else as a native macOS app.
Licensed under the WTFPL — do what the fuck you want.