Someone in a chat or in the comments tells you to "install TG WS Proxy", and you dutifully go and search for it. What you get is a jumble: .exe files on file-sharing sites, some apk files, GitHub pages, and websites where a proxy somehow has "nodes" and "uptime". From results like these you can't tell what you're being asked to install: a server, an app or a new version of Telegram.

Let me say right away that there won't be a link to the file or installation instructions here. We read the program's description and its code. There will be a short bit about us at the very end.

It's not a server and not a new Telegram

Telegram WS Proxy (more often written TG WS Proxy) wasn't made by Telegram. It's an open-source project by an independent developer, it appeared in spring 2026, and the original lives on GitHub. You install the program on a computer, and it works together with Telegram Desktop, that is, the Telegram app for computers. The author himself calls it a local proxy for Telegram Desktop.

The program runs on the same computer and pretends to be an ordinary MTProto proxy as far as Telegram is concerned. Telegram Desktop connects to it at the address 127.0.0.1, and that address means "this very computer". From there the program connects to Telegram's servers by itself over WebSocket, which is where the letters WS in the name come from. The author didn't invent WebSocket: Telegram's documentation lists it among the standard ways of connecting to its servers, and Telegram recommends it for clients that run in a browser.

This has one useful consequence. Sometimes people forward a "ready-made link" like tg://proxy?server=127.0.0.1… in chats and say that this is the WS proxy. But a link like that points to whatever device it's opened on, and without the program running it won't connect anything. Whoever sent it simply shared the address of their own laptop, except that on your device this address now means yours.

There's no original version for phones at all, because the author builds the program only for Windows, macOS and Linux. Everything you find in search results as a "TG WS Proxy apk" or an iPhone version was made by other people.

And one more mix-up caused by similar names. Since version 7.1 (August 2026), Telegram Desktop itself has a new proxy type, WEB, and you set it up in the app's settings. It has nothing to do with the TG WS Proxy program. I'm curious to see what comes of it myself, but I wouldn't rush, because only three days later, in version 7.1.2, Telegram started warning about possible risks when you add a proxy like that to the app.

Why there are so many copies and why they're dangerous

There are hundreds of projects on GitHub with "tg-ws-proxy" in their name. Only one of them is the original, and you can't tell from the name who is behind the rest or what's in their files.

In September 2026 someone complained in the program's repository that their antivirus had found a stealer in a downloaded .exe, that is, a program that steals passwords and login data. The author replied that the file hadn't been downloaded from his repository and that it was a stealer disguised as the real file, and added: if you ran it, change your passwords and log out of all sessions. In the same thread he recalled that a similar case had already happened to someone who had looked for the program through an ordinary search engine.

Lookalike websites are a separate story. We opened one such site on 18 October 2026. It passes itself off as TG WS Proxy and shows more than two dozen "nodes", a counter of people online and uptime to a hundredth of a percent, even though the description of a program that runs on the user's own computer has no "nodes" with people online or uptime. The download buttons there don't lead to the author but to a different repository created in September, and the file in it doesn't match the original in size. What's inside a file like that, you can't tell from the page, but I wouldn't trust a site like this.

There's also one piece of advice in the original's description that I don't like. The author honestly warns that antivirus programs often flag it by mistake, and advises that if your antivirus won't let you download it, you turn the antivirus off for a while and add the file to its exceptions. I understand where that comes from, but in my view this is exactly the habit the copies count on: a person knows in advance that the antivirus will complain, and so they brush off the warning when it's about a real stealer.

Telegram itself advises getting proxies only from a source you can trust, and for programs on your computer that rightly applies even more. One of the project's contributors writes plainly that they aren't responsible for files that don't come from the project's repository and its mirror. So a file from a chat, from a file-sharing site, from a site with "nodes" or from the first link you happen to find in search didn't come from the author, and nobody knows what's really in it.

If you've already run a file like that

Two rules from Telegram itself, about the login code and the cloud password, are worth adding to the author's advice. Step by step:

  1. Pick up your phone, not that computer, open Settings → Devices in Telegram (or Privacy and Security → Active Sessions) and terminate all sessions except the current one, that is, except the phone itself. Terminate the session on that computer too: if the file managed to copy your Telegram data, that data can be used to log in without a code.
  2. Change the passwords you typed or stored on that computer, again from your phone or another device and not from the computer itself, otherwise the program, if it's still running, will learn the new passwords too. Changing passwords is what the program's author himself advises. And until that computer has been checked for viruses, don't log in from it again, neither to Telegram nor to your other accounts.
  3. Never share your Telegram login code with anyone, whether people or other services and apps. Telegram says so itself in its FAQ.
  4. If you haven't turned on the cloud password in Telegram yet, turn it on from your phone: Settings → Privacy and Security → Two-Step Verification.

I won't guess what exactly a program like that managed to take, because we don't know what was in your file.

So do you need this program

You don't need it to use a proxy in Telegram. Telegram's documentation says plainly that all Telegram mobile and desktop apps can connect through a proxy on their own, and in Telegram Desktop a proxy is also set up in the app itself. How to choose an ordinary proxy and what to look out for is covered in a separate article about Telegram proxies.

The program itself lives its own life, and it has its own risks. You're installing a file from an independent developer on your computer, and, as far as I can tell, it gets the same capabilities as any other program you run. Older reviews say it doesn't need third-party servers. But in current versions, by default some connections may go not directly to Telegram's servers but through third-party addresses from a list the project maintains itself. Whose addresses these are, we don't know. And then there are the copies described above.

Whether to install it is up to you, and I won't try to talk you into it or out of it. All the more so because we sell proxies for Telegram ourselves, so keep that in mind when you read my advice.

Now, as promised, a short bit about us. An ordinary proxy is connected inside Telegram itself with a link, and FreeGate is exactly that kind: a personal proxy for Telegram with no separate app. You open the link in Telegram, not in a browser, Telegram itself asks about the proxy, and you tap "Connect Proxy". Each device gets its own link, and if it leaks, you can change it in your account with one tap, and the old one stops working at once. The proxy works only inside Telegram, so your banking app and other apps open as usual. We can't see your messages: Telegram encrypts them itself, and the proxy only passes along encrypted data.

FreeGate works in the official Telegram apps for iOS, Android, Windows, macOS and Linux, while the web version of Telegram doesn't support proxies. First you can try it free for 1 day after signing up with an email and confirming your address: no payment, no phone number and no automatic charges. After that it's $1.00 for 30 days or $2.50 for 90 days, price per device, and a phone and a computer count as 2 devices. It's all at freegate.app/world.