How to Add a Telegram Mini App to Your Home Screen
A mini app can be pinned to your home screen as its own icon. Tapping it opens the app directly, instead of Telegram, then a chat, then a menu, then the app.
Four taps become one, which sounds like a small thing until you notice that the shortcut also decides what you end up opening at all.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Pin a mini app on a phone or a computer.
- check_circle Know what the icon is and is not.
- check_circle Decide which apps have earned one.
- check_circle Remove one without losing anything.
The option sits in the mini app's own menu, not in Telegram's settings.
install_mobile An icon, not an installation
Nothing is downloaded. The icon is a shortcut that opens Telegram and goes straight to that app, and everything about the app still lives where it lived before — in the chat with its bot, in your attachment menu, on the developer's server. What changes is the route in.
That has one genuinely useful consequence: there is no separate account and no second login. Because the shortcut arrives through Telegram, you are already signed in by the time the app draws itself, which is why a wallet or a game can pick up exactly where you left it without asking you anything.
It has a matching consequence worth saying plainly. An icon on the home screen is a signed-in door to something that may hold money or an account, sitting where anybody who picks up the unlocked phone can see it. That is an argument for a passcode rather than against the shortcut, but it is the reason a wallet deserves more thought here than a puzzle game does.
Where the option lives on each platform
The menu is in the same corner everywhere. What happens after you tap it is not.
| How to add it | What you end up with | What to know | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Android | Open the mini app, then its menu in the top corner, then add to home screen | A normal home screen icon that you can drag wherever you like, added after one system confirmation. | Some launchers place new icons on the first free space rather than the page you were looking at, so it may not appear where you expect. |
| iPhone and iPad | The same menu, then follow the share sheet that opens | An icon carrying a small Telegram mark, so you can tell it apart from an app you installed from the store. | It takes an extra step through the system share sheet, because only that sheet is allowed to put things on an iPhone home screen. |
| Desktop | Right-click the mini app's window or tab and create a shortcut | A desktop or Start menu entry that opens the app in its own window rather than inside the chat list. | The separate window is the real benefit here — it is what lets you keep a dashboard visible beside the conversation it belongs to. |
| Removing it | Delete the icon the way you delete any other | Nothing else changes. The app, its chat, your progress and your account are all untouched. | Which also means deleting the icon is not a way to revoke anything. To end an app's access, deal with the app rather than the shortcut. |
The icon is a route, not an install. Adding one costs nothing and removing one loses nothing.
apps Which apps have earned one
Home screen space is the scarcest thing on a phone, and the test is not whether an app is good but whether you open it without being prompted. Something you use most days — a tracker, a dashboard, a game you actually return to — saves you four taps a day and is worth an icon. Something you opened twice because a friend sent it will sit there for a year looking like a decision you never made.
There is a quieter reason to be careful. Mini apps that pay people to tap things want a home screen icon more than anything else on this page, because the whole model depends on you coming back daily without deciding to. An icon is how a habit gets installed, and it is worth noticing when the app asks for one before it has given you anything.
The good version of the prompt arrives late — after you have finished something, won something, set something up. The version that arrives in the first ten seconds is asking for a commitment from somebody who has not yet seen what they are committing to.
settings Doing it
- Open the mini app first The option lives inside it, not in settings.
- Use the menu in the top corner Then choose to add it to the home screen.
- Follow the share sheet on iPhone One extra step the system insists on.
- On desktop, make it a window Right-click the app and create a shortcut.
- Only pin what you open unprompted Four taps saved daily, not once.
- Delete the icon freely Nothing behind it is removed with it.
This page puts one deep link on your home screen. The curriculum step is the mechanism underneath: how a link can name a bot, an app and a starting state, and how the same trick is used to route people to exactly the right place from outside Telegram.
Mini app home screen shortcuts at a glance
Where the option lives on each platform, why the icon is a link rather than an installation, which apps deserve the space, and what removing it does, on one page. Tap to open it at full resolution.
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