How To Forward SMS To Telegram On Android With WizeSMS

Written by the Fulldive product engineering team, based on direct inspection of the repositories listed below.

Forwarding SMS to Telegram on Android: what it takes

Looking for a reliable way to set up SMS to Telegram on Android? The practical recipe is: use an SMS app that can act as the default handler, connect it to a Telegram bot destination, and accept the privacy tradeoff of routing messages through a relay. WizeSMS (package com.fulldive.extension.divesms, previously Dive SMS) implements that flow, using a Fulldive-hosted Cloud Function as the bridge to Telegram’s Bot API.

This post explains how the forwarding actually works, how to set it up, and what “forwarding through a relay” means for your threat model.

How WizeSMS sends SMS to Telegram

The Telegram side of the forwarder went in with commit fa8b722b, which added SMS to Telegram forwarding via a Cloud Function. That is the key architectural detail: the app does not hold Telegram bot tokens directly in the client, and it does not try to speak to the Telegram Bot API from your phone. It hands the message to a Fulldive-operated function that then delivers to Telegram using the standard Telegram Bot API.

Around that core commit, the forwarding experience was fleshed out:

4c1ec87b added the forwarding settings screen shared with the email destination.
e6815676 and a62b2d44 added forwarding translations across the app’s supported locales, because forwarding UI is high-stakes copy and needs to read clearly in every language.
a53b2673 added forwarding status and failure notifications, so delivery errors surface on the device instead of hiding in a log.

As with every WizeSMS destination, forwarding is opt-in. The app ships with forwarding disabled, and the default SMS warning banner (3838a63b) will prompt you if WizeSMS isn’t set as the default handler — without that role, Android will not deliver incoming SMS to the app at all.

Step-by-step: WizeSMS to a Telegram destination

Install WizeSMS (listed on the Fulldive apps page) and set it as your default SMS app when prompted. See default SMS app on Android for why this step is necessary.
Open Forwarding settings and choose Telegram as a destination.
Follow the on-screen flow to pair WizeSMS with your Telegram destination. The relay function (fa8b722b) is what receives the forward and delivers the message via Telegram’s Bot API.
Use the forwarding status notifications (a53b2673) to confirm messages are going through. If a delivery fails, you get a notification — not silence.
Decide which conversations to forward. Forwarding every inbound SMS usually creates more noise than signal; most people want a small number of sender or keyword rules.

Privacy tradeoffs

Routing SMS through Telegram, via any relay, is a privacy decision. Be honest with yourself about it.

The Cloud Function sees the message. Even if transit is encrypted end-to-end between your phone and the relay, and between the relay and Telegram’s servers, the relay itself handles the payload. That is the nature of a server-side bot delivery.
Telegram’s Bot API is not end-to-end encrypted. Bot messages are server-mediated. See the Bot API docs (core.telegram.org/bots/api) and Telegram’s own description of where client-server vs end-to-end applies.
Forwarding OTPs magnifies the tradeoff. If you forward verification codes, the account that receives those forwards effectively becomes a login channel. Read forwarding OTPs and verification codes: what you’re actually doing before you turn that on.
Telegram account security now matters for your SMS. Session hijacking of your Telegram account becomes session hijacking of any alert you forward there.
You can turn it off. Forwarding is opt-in, added later in the app’s history, and can be disabled in the same screen where you configured it. WizeSMS’s in-app privacy note (42f44224) exists precisely so this tradeoff is visible at the point of opt-in.

None of this means the feature is unsafe to use. It means you should use it with an accurate picture of what you’re doing.

Why a Cloud Function relay rather than a direct bot token

Two practical reasons, both visible in the code choice (fa8b722b):

Token hygiene. A direct bot token pasted into a phone app is easy to leak via backups, screenshots, or malicious apps on the same device. A server-side relay keeps the Telegram credential off the device.
Operational flexibility. Going through a function means the app can be updated, rate-limited, or rerouted without forcing every installed client to change. That matters when the Telegram Bot API itself evolves.

Using Telegram vs email as a destination

Telegram is a good fit when you want push-style delivery to a mobile app you already have, across devices, without digging into an inbox. Email is a better fit when you want a searchable archive and the same place your other alerts land. The two aren’t mutually exclusive; you can configure both in the same settings screen (4c1ec87b).

For the email flow specifically, see how to forward SMS to email on Android. For the broader product arc of WizeSMS, see how WizeSMS evolved from messenger to forwarding utility.

Reliability notes

Forwarding is only as good as the underlying SMS receiver. WizeSMS’s 2025 release notes include MMS/SMS reliability fixes (68ecf707), MMS error handling (5895a312), and dedicated SMS/MMS debugging tooling (0f382e4a). That work is the reason the Telegram destination is worth using in practice. The SMS and MMS reliability post walks through the engineering behind it.

Getting help

If the Telegram pairing fails, the first thing to check is the forwarding status notification (a53b2673) — it usually tells you whether the device-to-relay or relay-to-Telegram leg is the problem. If you’re stuck, the Discord community link (dfc606b3) and support@fulldive.com are the right next steps. The Fulldive FAQ and About pages cover ecosystem-wide questions.

Sources

Telegram Bot API — server-mediated messaging semantics.
Android telephony provider.
Internal repository brief: website/docs/app-evolution/wizesms-divesms.md.

Last updated: 2026-04-16. Commit hashes and version numbers are drawn from Fulldive repositories inspected on 2026-04-13.