Is Telegram end-to-end encrypted?

Here's how it breaks down, based on Telegram's own FAQ:

• Regular one-on-one chats: not end-to-end encrypted. They're encrypted between your phone and Telegram's servers, and stored in Telegram's cloud.
• Groups: not end-to-end encrypted, and there's no setting that changes that.
• Channels: not end-to-end encrypted either.
• Secret Chats: end-to-end encrypted, but only one-on-one, only if you start one, and only on the device you started it on.
• Voice and video calls: end-to-end encrypted, group calls included.

So if you've never started a Secret Chat, there's a good chance none of your Telegram messages have ever been end-to-end encrypted.

End-to-end encryption means your message gets locked on your phone and can only be opened on the phone of the person you're talking to. Everything in between, including the company that runs the app, only ever sees scrambled data.

Think of it like sending a letter. A regular cloud chat is a letter you hand to a post office that opens it, files a copy and then sends it on. End-to-end encryption is a locked box that only your friend has the key to. The post office still delivers it, but it can't look inside.

Plenty of apps say they're "encrypted", and they usually are, in some way. The real question is who holds the keys. With end-to-end encryption, only the two ends do. With the other kind, the app's own servers hold keys too, so they can open your messages, even if they promise not to look.

Want the longer version? We wrote a whole guide on how end-to-end encryption works.

In Secret Chats, no. In regular chats, Telegram holds the keys, so the honest answer is that your privacy depends on Telegram.

Telegram calls its normal chats "cloud chats". In its own words, they use "client-server/server-client encryption" and are "stored encrypted in the Telegram Cloud". In plain English: your message is protected on the way from your phone to Telegram, and on the way from Telegram to your friend. At Telegram itself, it arrives in a form Telegram can work with. Then it's stored, encrypted with keys Telegram holds. Telegram says it splits those keys up and keeps them apart from the data they protect.

That's what makes Telegram so convenient. Your whole chat history shows up on every phone, tablet and computer you log in on, and you can search years of messages from a brand new device. That only works because Telegram keeps a copy of your chats that it can read.

So the trade-off is simple. With cloud chats, your privacy depends on how Telegram runs its systems. End-to-end encryption is built so you don't have to trust anyone's systems, just the math.

Secret Chats are where Telegram does use end-to-end encryption. In Telegram's words, "only you and the recipient can read those messages". A Secret Chat shows up as a separate chat next to your regular one with the same person.

They come with a few strings attached, though:

• You have to start them yourself, for every person.
• They're one-on-one only. There's no Secret Chat for groups.
• They live on one device. Start one on your phone and it won't show up on your laptop or tablet.
• Your regular chat with the same person keeps going next to it, so it's easy to type in the wrong one without noticing.

Secret Chats also come with a few extras. Telegram says they leave no trace on its servers, you can set messages to self-destruct after a while, and they can't be forwarded.

Secret Chats themselves are solid. The problem is that they're optional, so most conversations never use them. Security you have to remember to switch on tends to stay off.

There's no setting that turns on end-to-end encryption for all your chats. You can only start a Secret Chat with one person at a time. Here's how, on both iPhone and Android:

1. 1Open the chat with the person you want to talk to privately, and tap their name at the top to open their profile.
2. 2Open the menu on their profile and tap Start Secret Chat. You can also start a new message and choose New Secret Chat.
3. 3If they're not online, you'll see "Waiting for (their name) to get online". The Secret Chat starts once their phone joins and the keys have been exchanged.
4. 4From then on, use the new chat with the lock next to it. Your old chat with them stays as it was, and it's still not end-to-end encrypted.

Repeat that for every person you want to talk to privately, and remember that the Secret Chat only lives on the phone you started it on. For groups, there's no way to do it at all.

Telegram gives every Secret Chat an encryption key you can check. Open the Secret Chat, tap the person's name and look for Encryption Key. You'll see an image and a line of text made from the chat's key.

Now compare them with what the other person sees on their phone, ideally side by side or over a call. In Telegram's own words: if they look the same on both devices, "end-to-end encryption is guaranteed". If they don't match, someone could be sitting in the middle, and you shouldn't trust that chat with anything private.

No. This is the part that surprises people most. Lots of people use Telegram mainly for groups: family chats, friend groups, work teams, local communities. None of those are end-to-end encrypted, and there's no switch that changes it, because Secret Chats are one-on-one only.

Channels work the same way. For a public channel that makes sense, since anyone can read it anyway. But your private family group is stored in Telegram's cloud in the same way a public channel is.

Only inside Secret Chats. Photos, videos, voice messages and files you send in a regular chat or a group are handled just like the messages: protected on the way, then stored in Telegram's cloud, where Telegram holds the keys.

In a Secret Chat, the photos and files you send are end-to-end encrypted along with the messages. So the same rule applies to everything: what you send is only end-to-end encrypted if you started a Secret Chat first.

Yes, and credit where it's due: calls are where Telegram does well. According to its FAQ, voice and video calls are end-to-end encrypted, and so are group calls with up to 200 people.

So calls are covered. It's the messages, the thing most people use all day long, where end-to-end encryption is the exception instead of the rule.

Telegram has explained this itself. With end-to-end encryption, the keys live on your devices, not on Telegram's servers, which makes it hard to bring your full history to a new device. So Telegram chose the cloud for everyday chats and offered Secret Chats as a separate option.

It's worth knowing that it can be done, though. WhatsApp and Signal both keep chats end-to-end encrypted on the extra devices you link, like a laptop. So the cloud isn't the only way to use more than one device. It's just the way Telegram picked.

It's a real trade-off, not a trick, and cloud sync is genuinely handy. But it does mean that on Telegram, convenience is the default and privacy is the extra step. Other apps made the opposite call: encrypt everything, always, and build the rest of the app around that.

If end-to-end encryption by default is what you're after, here's how the big names stack up. WhatsApp and Signal encrypt every chat and call by default, just like Morse. Where Morse is different is the sign-up: you don't need a phone number at all.

It depends on what you use it for. For following big public channels or joining open communities, end-to-end encryption doesn't matter much, because the content is public anyway.

For private conversations it's a different story. Think health questions, money, relationships, work stuff you'd rather keep between you and the other person. There you want encryption that's on by default, everywhere, including in groups.

If you're sticking with Telegram, a few things make it safer:

• Use Secret Chats for anything private, and double-check that you're typing in the right chat.
• Turn on Two-Step Verification under Privacy and Security, so a code sent to your phone isn't enough to take over your account.
• Under Phone Number, set Who can see my phone number to Nobody, so other users can't see it.
• Keep sensitive talk out of groups, because groups are never end-to-end encrypted.

And encryption protects what you say, not who you talk to or when. That's a separate topic called metadata, and it's worth knowing about too.

Encryption is only part of privacy. Telegram also needs a phone number to sign up, and a phone number is tied to your real name in a lot of places: your carrier, your bank, your friends' address books.

Telegram lets you hide your number from other users, which helps. But the account itself still starts with it. If that matters to you, have a look at messaging without a phone number.

This is exactly why we built Morse the way we did. Everything in Morse is end-to-end encrypted, from the very first message: one-on-one chats, groups, photos, videos, voice notes, stickers and one-on-one calls. There's nothing to switch on and no secret mode to remember, because there's only one mode.

Under the hood, Morse uses the Signal Protocol, which gives you forward secrecy, with post-quantum key exchange (ML-KEM) on top. Our servers pass along encrypted messages they can't read. You can also set messages to disappear after a while. And you don't need a phone number or email to sign up at all: you get a Morse ID, and you decide who gets it.

Coming from Telegram? Here's how Morse and Telegram compare, side by side. Our security page has the details, and for the really deep dive there's the Morse security white paper.