<![CDATA[How does the tdesktop render tabs?]]>I'm new to this and trying to figure out how the Telegram team managed to render tabs and chat selection so effectively. Can anyone give me a conceptual overview (perhaps with some key code examples) of how they did it?

I tried reading the source code, but it's pretty hard for a beginner to understand—it's written in a very low-level style. By the way, I didn't find a single QTabWidget in it.

I'm particularly interested in how they implemented interaction between tabs and the chat,
and how they store both.
image-2025-02-08-2036.png

I'll try to recreate something similar

]]>https://forum.qt.io/topic/165019/how-does-the-tdesktop-render-tabsRSS for NodeFri, 04 Sep 2026 21:50:37 GMTMon, 17 Aug 2026 22:04:08 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to How does the tdesktop render tabs? on Fri, 21 Aug 2026 05:14:19 GMT]]>@MarkoProg said in How does the tdesktop render tabs?:

They don't use QML; they render everything from scratch using QWidgets, and I'm also interested in this approach. How exactly did they achieve this using QWidgets?

The idea the same, regardless of whether you're using Qt Quick or Qt Widgets:

  • A Model stores an overview of the chat data.
    • One row in the Model represents one chat.
    • A row would contain data like chat title, chat icon, latest timestamp, latest message, delivery status.
  • A Delegate lays out the GUI components in its rectangle (e.g. icon on the left, timestamp of the top-right).
  • A ListView (Qt Quick) or QListView/QListWidget (Qt Widgets) is used to display the "tabs".
    • If the Model contains N rows (N chats), then the View creates N Delegates.
    • The View takes data from each row and gives that data to corresponding Delegate of that row. The Delegate then writes the data into the GUI
]]>https://forum.qt.io/post/839804https://forum.qt.io/post/839804Fri, 21 Aug 2026 05:14:19 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to How does the tdesktop render tabs? on Thu, 20 Aug 2026 22:17:54 GMT]]>@JKSH They don't use QML; they render everything from scratch using QWidgets, and I'm also interested in this approach. How exactly did they achieve this using QWidgets? It seems to require a deeper understanding of how rendering works in Qt.

]]>https://forum.qt.io/post/839803https://forum.qt.io/post/839803Thu, 20 Aug 2026 22:17:54 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to How does the tdesktop render tabs? on Tue, 18 Aug 2026 03:47:44 GMT]]>@MarkoProg said in How does the tdesktop render tabs?:

trying to figure out how the Telegram team managed to render tabs

From your screenshot, that looks like a ListView or similar -- no tabs involved.

This tutorial shows a simple version of that: https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qtquickcontrols-chattutorial-example.html

]]>https://forum.qt.io/post/839768https://forum.qt.io/post/839768Tue, 18 Aug 2026 03:47:44 GMT