Plain Telegram underneath
Files are ordinary media messages. Any Telegram client can browse them and filter folders by hashtag.
Your Telegram channel,
as a file system.
tg-drive uploads files as ordinary Telegram media, keeps a rebuildable index, and gives you
ls, tree, and a native app on top. Lose the database, and the channel
rebuilds it.
Live demo. The real td-gui running in your browser on sample files. Nothing is uploaded, and settings are off.
Everything a drive needs. Nothing Telegram doesn't already have.
The channel stays a normal channel. tg-drive adds the structure on top, and can always rebuild it.
Recoverable by design
Telegram is the source of truth. Lose the database and td scan --full rebuilds the index from the channel.
A real file tree
Exact ls and tree. Upload and download whole trees; move, rename, delete, or tombstone files.
Scriptable
Every command speaks stable --json on stdout with documented exit codes. Logs stay on stderr.
Resumable uploads
Files larger than 10 MB pick up where they stopped. Only the parts Telegram never confirmed are sent again.
A desktop app, too
td-gui puts the same engine behind a native window: drive, transfers, import, and maintenance.
How it works
-
1
One channel, one root
td initbinds a Telegram channel to a local folder and links a discussion group for machine records. -
2
Readable posts, precise records
Each file is a media message with a human caption. Its manifest lives in the comment thread, out of the timeline.
-
3
A cache you can throw away
SQLite only mirrors the channel. On a new machine, bind the same channel again and the index comes back.
# sign in once, as your own Telegram user
$ td auth setup
$ td auth login
# bind a channel and upload
$ td init ~/Pictures --create-channel
$ td cp ~/Pictures/beach.jpg /2024/beach.jpg
$ td tree /
/
└── 2024
└── beach.jpg
# new machine? the channel remembers
$ td init ~/Pictures --bind-channelFree, open source, and yours.
Apache-2.0. Your files stay in your own Telegram account; tg-drive never runs a server.