You're in a country where Telegram is restricted, Telegram on your iPhone is stuck on "Connecting...", and you search for a Telegram proxy for iPhone. Plenty of people look for something to download at this point. A search in the App Store for a Telegram proxy shows a mix of third-party Telegram clients and VPN apps, and Telegram itself wasn't even first on the list. Meanwhile you most likely already have a link from a friend, or three cryptic lines.

Let me say up front: we sell proxies ourselves, so I'm not an outsider here, but we'll come up only at the end. I took the button labels from the English strings in the code of Telegram for iOS version 13.0 and checked in the same code where each button sits. If your Telegram is set to another language, the labels will of course be in that language.

The official app in the App Store is called Telegram Messenger, the seller is Telegram FZ-LLC, and the same app installs on iPad. You don't need to install anything else. Telegram's help says plainly that all its mobile and desktop apps can connect through a proxy, and that includes the iPhone.

Someone sent you a proxy link

If you already have a link, you won't have to dig through settings, it all happens right on the phone:

  1. Tap the link wherever it arrived, in a chat for example. The iPhone should hand t.me links straight to Telegram, not to the browser.
  2. Telegram opens the "Proxy" window with the fields "Server", "Port" and "Secret". The secret is hidden behind dots, and that's on purpose.
  3. If you want to check the server first, tap "Check Status" in the "Status" row. Before the first check the iPhone shows a "Warning" window with the text "This action will expose your IP address to the admin of the proxy server.", and then you tap "Proceed". The status first says "checking...", then "N ms ping" or "unavailable".
  4. Tap "Connect Proxy". If you skipped the check, the "Warning" window appears now, so tap "Proceed".

After that the iPhone puts the proxy at the top of the list, turns it on and waits up to 15 seconds for a connection. If it works, the window closes and a shield with "Proxy Enabled" appears at the top. If it doesn't, you'll see "Failed to connect", and Telegram goes back to the proxy settings you had before.

The IP warning isn't there just for show. Telegram's proxy help page says honestly that the proxy owner can't read your messages or tell whose account it is, but can collect which IP you connect from, at what times, and the simple fact that you use Telegram. That's why Telegram advises connecting only to proxies from a source you trust. Where to get links and whom to trust, I went through in the general article on Telegram proxies. And one rule with no exceptions: if a "proxy" asks you for your Telegram login code, it isn't a proxy.

Sometimes the link opens in Safari anyway. I won't promise that the page in the browser will pass the settings on to Telegram, because with some links it just redirects to telegram.org. It's more reliable to copy the link, paste it into any chat in Telegram and tap it there.

What if you got three lines instead of a link

Then you'll have to enter the server, port and secret by hand, and the place for that is tucked away fairly deep:

  1. Open "Settings" → "Data and Storage" and scroll to the very bottom, to the "CONNECTION TYPE" section.
  2. Tap "Proxy", then "Add Proxy".
  3. Choose the MTProto type.
  4. Fill in "Server" and "Port", paste the secret into the "Secret" field in the "CREDENTIALS" section, and save.

In the English interface the field is called "Secret", the same name the long string has in links and in Telegram's help, so there's nothing to mix up. In other interface languages the field and menu items may be translated quite differently, so it's worth knowing that this field is the one for the secret.

If you can't tap the link for some reason, you can copy it and open "Add Proxy". When there's a proxy link on the clipboard, "Paste From Clipboard" appears at the top of that screen and the fields fill in by themselves.

The type picker also has SOCKS5 and WEB. If you were given a username and password instead of a secret, that's SOCKS5, and it has its own "Username" and "Password" fields. WEB arrived in version 13.0: it needs an address and a secret and doesn't ask for a port. How it behaves in real life, I don't know yet.

How to tell the proxy is working, and what to do if it isn't

The surest check is "Settings" → "Data and Storage": next to "Proxy" it says "MTProto" when the proxy is on and "None" when it's off. The shield above your chat list doesn't prove it by itself: it shows up whenever at least one proxy is saved, even a disabled one. Tapping it does open the proxy settings, though.

If you see "unavailable" when checking and "Failed to connect" when connecting, most likely that server just can't be reached right now. Telegram for iPhone has a hint for this case, "The proxy may be unavailable. Try selecting another one.", and I think it's sound advice: switching to another server is easier than guessing what happened to this one.

The iPhone doesn't switch to the next proxy automatically. Telegram's help describes automatic switching, but doesn't say on which devices. So I'd keep a spare proxy in the list and switch to it myself when something fails, by tapping it in the "SAVED PROXIES" list.

Telegram 13.0 requires iOS 15 or later, so the new version won't install on iPhones with iOS 13 or 14. If your system allows it and Telegram hasn't been updated in a while, it's better to update it from the App Store.

After you connect, an unfamiliar channel marked "Proxy Sponsor" may show up in your chats. The proxy owner promotes it. The first time you open a channel like that, Telegram shows the hint "The proxy you are using displays a sponsored channel in your chat list." If you want the channel gone from your chat list, Telegram's own suggestion is to turn the proxy off in "Settings" → "Data and Storage". The "Use for calls" switch on iPhone only appears when a SOCKS5 proxy is active, so with MTProto you don't need to look for it.

When you no longer need the proxy

You can turn it off in the same place, "Settings" → "Data and Storage" → "Proxy", with the "Use Proxy" switch. The servers stay in the "SAVED PROXIES" list, and the same switch turns them back on later. To remove a server from the list completely, I assume you use "Edit" at the top of the screen.

If you'd rather have your own proxy than someone else's

Now, as promised, about us. FreeGate gives you a personal MTProto proxy, and the connection to it is disguised as ordinary HTTPS. It works only inside Telegram, so your banking app and your other apps go online directly, as usual. Each device gets its own link, and if it leaks, you change it in your account with one tap, and the old one stops working at once. We can't see your messages, Telegram encrypts them itself.

On iPhone everything connects the same way as at the start of this article: "Connect in Telegram" or a QR code on your computer screen, and then "Connect Proxy" in the Telegram window.

To try it, you sign up with an email, confirm your address and get 1 trial day, with no payment, no phone number and no automatic charges. After that it's $1.00 for 30 days or $2.50 for 90 days, and the price is per device. So an iPhone and an iPad, just like an iPhone and a computer, count as 2 devices.

Plans are paid from your account balance, and for now the balance is topped up through support. When the subscription ends, nothing is charged by itself: the link stops connecting, and you either renew the plan in your account or turn the proxy off with the same "Use Proxy" switch.

You can see the plans and try it at freegate.app/world.