Telegram won't load photos, videos and voice notes — what to do in 2026
If photos hang at 30%, videos won't play, and voice notes take 5 minutes instead of 5 seconds — it's not your internet. It's carrier DPI filtering that cuts specifically Telegram media traffic. Fixed in 30 seconds with a free MTProto proxy.
Symptoms by content type
Carriers' DPI (Rostelecom, MTS, Beeline, MegaFon, T2/Tele2) gives text messages almost full speed so users don't immediately notice that Telegram is throttled. But as soon as multimedia transmission begins, the speed is cut to 50-200 kbps:
| Type | Symptom | Speed without proxy | With our proxy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photo | Hangs at 10-30% | ~80 kbps | Instant |
| Chat video | Endless buffering | ~120 kbps | HD no delay |
| Voice note | "Sending" 30+ sec | ~50 kbps | ≤2 sec |
| Video note (circle) | Recording breaks | ~70 kbps | Stable |
| Sticker / GIF | Grey placeholder | ~150 kbps | Instant |
| Voice call | Swallows words, drops | ~100 kbps | Clean audio |
Why media specifically
Text messages go through the same Telegram servers as media but use less bytes and packets of 100-500 bytes. DPI recognizes Telegram traffic by signature but doesn't fully block it — that would cause mass complaints. Instead, token bucket throttling is applied: the channel is limited to about 50 KB/sec budget per session. Text fits this budget easily, but a 2 MB photo needs 40 seconds — hence the freezing.
How to fix this
MTProto proxy with Fake-TLS obfuscation masks your Telegram traffic as regular HTTPS on the standard port 443. The carrier's DPI sees a legitimate TLS handshake to google.com — and lets it through at full channel speed (usually 100 Mbps on mobile LTE and up to 1 Gbps on home fiber).
- Open this site on the phone or PC where Telegram is installed.
- Go to the homepage and click "Connect proxy".
- Telegram will launch and show a dialog — confirm.
- Done. Open any chat with media — photos, videos and voice notes work instantly.
Free, no signup. Works on iPhone, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux and Telegram Web.
Connect →Things that do NOT help
- Restarting phone / router — has no effect on the carrier's DPI.
- Switching Wi-Fi to 4G/5G and back — all major Russian carriers apply DPI equally.
- Clearing Telegram cache — cache is not related to throttling, the issue is in the network channel.
- Reinstalling Telegram — DPI looks at network traffic, not the app.
- Replacing Telegram with Telegram X or Nicegram — same MTProto protocol, same DPI.