Last night everything was fine, and today you open Telegram and the chats are frozen, photos hang as empty squares, and "Connecting..." keeps spinning at the top. You go to search, and you get a mix of news about "what's wrong with Telegram today", outage report sites and advice of every kind: log out of your account, switch servers (nobody quite says which server you're supposed to switch in Telegram), and somewhere someone states confidently that it's not your fault at all and there's nothing you can do.

I suggest starting not with a search but with the line Telegram itself shows at the top of the screen. While there's no connection, it writes a short status there about what exactly isn't working, and that already tells you where to look. I looked at how these statuses work in the code of Telegram for Android, and here's what they mean.

What Telegram is telling you at the top of the screen

"Waiting for network..." appears when the phone's system tells the app that there's no network. At that point Telegram doesn't even try to reach its servers, so there's no point looking for the cause inside Telegram. Check instead whether Wi-Fi or mobile data is on and whether airplane mode was left on. I looked at this part in the Android code. iPhone has a similar line too.

"Connecting..." is trickier. The phone has internet, no proxy is turned on in Telegram, and Telegram still can't reach its servers. This is where there are things to check.

If a proxy is turned on in Telegram and it isn't responding, you can see that too, though it looks different on each platform. On Android, instead of "Connecting..." the top line says "Connecting to proxy...". In Telegram Desktop a proxy icon appears in the bottom left corner with a loading indicator spinning next to it. On iPhone you still see the usual "Connecting...", and sometimes a hint pops up saying "The proxy may be unavailable. Try selecting another one." Telegram is trying to go through the proxy, the proxy isn't answering, and until you turn it off or fix it, Telegram will keep knocking on that door.

"Updating..." is actually a good sign, because the connection is already there and Telegram is loading new messages. Just wait a moment.

What you can do, in order

The steps go from the quickest to the ones that take a couple of minutes. After each one, look at the line at the top, and if it's gone, you can stop there.

  1. Another network. Switch from Wi-Fi to mobile data or the other way round. If Telegram comes back on the other network, the problem is with the first one: the router, your home internet provider or your mobile carrier.
  2. The proxy in Telegram. If you see one of the proxy signs above, a proxy is on. You can see whether it works in the proxy settings (the path is just below): the selected proxy should say "Connected" ("online" in Telegram Desktop), and if it still says connecting, there's no connection through it yet. The proxy may have quietly died, since links from public lists don't live long, or the subscription on a paid one may have run out. Turn it off and see what changes. On Android that's the "Use Proxy" switch under "Data and Storage" → "Proxy Settings". On iPhone the path is "Settings" → "Data and Storage" → "Proxy" at the bottom. In Telegram Desktop you need "Disable proxy" under "Settings" → "Advanced" → "Connection type". On a computer there's one more catch: by default Telegram Desktop uses the system proxy settings ("Use system proxy settings"), so the proxy may be set not in Telegram itself but in the system. I've written about how proxies for Telegram work in general in a separate article.
  3. VPN. If a VPN is on on your phone, turn it off and check Telegram without it. A VPN routes all of your phone's traffic, not just Telegram's, so if the VPN itself hangs, Telegram stops along with it.
  4. Update the app. Install the latest version of Telegram from your app store or the official website. Telegram Desktop gets updates often, and when it doesn't recognise a proxy type, it asks you directly to make sure you're on the latest version.
  5. Restart. Close Telegram completely and open it again. If that doesn't help, restart the phone.
  6. Cache. If you want to try one more thing, clear the cache: "Settings" → "Data and Storage" → "Storage Usage" → "Clear Cache" (that's how the items are called on Android). You don't need to log out for this, your photos and videos stay in the Telegram cloud. Just don't expect a miracle: Telegram's help describes clearing the cache as a way to free up space on your phone and says nothing about fixing the connection.

How to tell it's not your phone

Outage report sites won't tell you much here. It's easier to ask a friend who uses the same carrier as you. If Telegram is spinning for them too, your other apps open fine, and you've already gone through the steps above, then the problem is most likely not your phone or your settings. And if it works for your friend, I'd check the proxy and the VPN once more, since they're easy to miss when you're in a hurry.

Why I don't recommend logging out

This advice does come up in search results, sometimes even with the suggestion to log out on all devices at once and log back in, and without a single warning. Yet Telegram's help says plainly that most users don't need to log out. When you log out, you lose all your secret chats, because they're tied to the device and not stored in the cloud. And there's one more thing: Telegram may send the login code not by SMS but to the "Telegram" chat on another device where you're already logged in.

So my conclusion is this: while Telegram can't connect, logging out to fix it is risky. Logging back in also needs a connection to Telegram, and the code may arrive somewhere you can't reach right now. That's my own assumption, Telegram's help doesn't say it. If the code doesn't arrive at all, that's a separate topic, but one rule always applies: never share your login code with anyone, not with people and not with other services or apps, however politely they ask.

If your proxy is ours

And finally, about us. Let me say upfront that we sell personal proxies for Telegram, so I'm not exactly an impartial author, keep that in mind. If you're using our proxy and Telegram keeps trying to connect, first check whether your subscription has ended. When it ends, the link stops connecting, but Telegram keeps trying to connect through it, and you see that same proxy sign. Renew your plan in your account or turn the proxy off in Telegram settings. Nothing is charged without your action.

FreeGate works only inside Telegram, and your browser and other apps go online directly. Each device has its own link, and if yours leaks somewhere, you can change it in your account with one tap, and the old one stops working right away. FreeGate can't see your messages, because Telegram encrypts them itself and the proxy only passes the encrypted data along. The proxy works in the official Telegram apps for iOS, Android, Windows, macOS and Linux, while Telegram Web doesn't support proxies.

You sign up with just an email, no phone number and no automatic charges. Once you confirm your address, you get 1 day to try it without paying. After that the Base plan is $1.00 for 30 days and Optimal is $2.50 for 90 days, and that's the price per device: if you need it on a phone and a computer, choose 2 when buying. You can try it at freegate.app/world.