There’s a bug in telegram-desktop and I think it is due to how you compile it for manjaro, because it doesn’t happens with the executable from https://desktop.telegram.org/ (I tested it both with the latest version 5.16.4, but for sure it was already present in the previous manjaro stable release and I don’t know how many version before).
It happens on kde (untested on other desktop environments), while using the default breeze theme IF you enable transparency for the context menus (From kde system settings go to Colors and themes → Applications style → configure style (of the breeze theme) → transparency tab and then set the slider to any value that isn’t 100% opaque): in this setup, right clicking on textbox where you write the messages has a chance to glitch the whole gui and make telegram unusable until you quit it and restart it (for me it’s like the whole window duplicates inside the chat widget).
One way I found to replicate this bug with 100% success rate is to enable the spellcheck, mistype a word in the chat textbox such that it appeasers with the red squiggly line below it and finally right click on that word. Unfortunately I cannot report this bug to telegram directly as the builds of telegram desktop from any distro repo are explicitly unsupported by them, so here I am.
As I said, if you download the executable directly from their website it works flawlessly with whatever transparency setting you have. I don’t know if this bug is present also in arch, but I really thing is due to some custom option (or wrong dependency version) you are using to compile it that the telegram’s guys aren’t.
Manjaro doesn’t compile it. It is built by Arch and taken over verbatim. So if it’s buggy on Manjaro, then it’ll be buggy on Arch as well.
That said, I cannot duplicate the issue you’re describing. It is not unlikely that your graphics adapter (and its driver) would be playing a role in that.
I doubt it’s something about the graphic card because I just tested it with both my nvidia and intel card and it happens exactly in the same way in both cases. Also, when the glitch happens the gui is still somehow responsive, and you can see it’s not just a wrong draw, but the gui still “work”, just with duplicated widgets in place of others: to me that looks more like a problem with qt that may it is not present in the version telegram uses to compile its binary (as I think it static links all its dependencies).
Btw, I found also that the bug happens only If I’m using wayland: if I switch back to xorg it works fine as the official binary does.
At this point I have no more clues of things to try: it may be a weird combination of the transparency setting + wayland + some other setting I would never thing of… Anything more I can do?
Yes, if you download it from the official website, then it’s statically linked. And then it may also default to XWayland — an X11 window as a client on Wayland.
Go to System Settings → Appearance → Application Style → Configure Breeze.
In the Transparency tab, adjust the context menu transparency slider to anything less than 100% opaque.
Enable spellcheck in Telegram.
Type a misspelled word in the chat box (one that triggers the red squiggly underline).
Right-click on the misspelled word.
Please learn to format - even a tiny little bit.
My steps:
switched (from Klassy to Breeze)… My transparency slider is around 70%…
Typed ‘spelcheck’ to get a red squiggly underline.
Right click…
Yes, I confirm - Telegram needs restarting if you do this with telegram-desktop 5.16.4-1 from the extra repo (labelled the 'Official Telegram Desktop client).
This doesn’t occur with the AUR telegram-desktop-bin 5.16.4-1 package.
Thankfully my speling does’nt need chekcin.
Two courses of action - leave the ‘extra repo’ version installed and avoid triggering it, wait for an update… or install the AUR version:
pamac install telegram-desktop-bin
Try out the repo version again after the next update…
TL;DR
The Arch‐repo build uses your system Qt 6.7 + hunspell, which has a known regression in the Sonnet spellchecker plugin and crashes on right-clicking misspelt words. The AUR binary bundles an older, unbroken Qt/hunspell combo, so it never sees that bug. Until Qt or Arch patches it, you can either disable spellcheck in your own build or stick with the bin package.
Just came here to report the same issue… will try using the AUR version. At least that will still be updated with the package manager, rather than downloading the binary from the telegram website that has no update mechanism or notification at all.
And installing the binary from AUR works properly. Thanks.
Mod edit:- Apart from screenshots being generally discouraged, the “same issue” needs no further illustration. Images removed.