How to restore deleted telegram media (MacOS)

telegram has an option to remove messages from both sides, you can even delete the message that other party sent from both ends.

this happened to me today, my friend sent a photo of her self and immediately removed it after i saw it (lets not discuss why 😂), i wanted it back.

being a software developer i knew it should be saved somewhere on the disk, after a little bit of search if found all media is being cached in the following directory:

/Users/{username}/Library/Group Containers/{something}.ru.keepcoder.Telegram/account-{x}/postbox/media

note: you should put your own username in the place, and also there are other parts that depends on your device. but you can easily find it if you follow those directories. if you don’t know how, just hit command+shift+g in the finder and type /users to go to users folder then. then repeat or select manually until you reach media.

it took almost 30 seconds to load the media folder. then i arranged by date created. and the it was. all of the files appear as a shortcut or without any extension. it looks like this:

it’s a bit annoying but fun also, open them with chrome (or drag and drop it inside the chrome window) and they will appear as they should be. then you can save them (command+s).

there you go! hope it helps as it did in my case ^_^