Telegram temporarily removed from the App Store
Apple briefly removed Telegram from the App Store on Monday evening after a review found content that violated its Child Pornography App Store (CSAM) guidelines. According to Reuters, the app was reinstated shortly afterward.
Reports of the app’s removal began circulating on Monday around 9:30 p.m. ET. Searching for Telegram in the App Store yielded no results, and the app’s website displayed a “Page Not Found” error message. Existing users were unaffected and could continue using the app. Telegram also remained available in the Mac App Store. Approximately 40 minutes later, around 10:10 p.m. ET, the app was available again in the App Store. Apple confirmed the reason for the removal in a statement.
“We temporarily removed Telegram from the App Store after a review revealed content that violated our strict guidelines against child pornography. The app was subsequently restored after the developer promptly removed the content and banned the user who posted it.”
Telegram removed more than 337,900 groups and channels related to CSAM in 2026
Telegram stated that the action stemmed from a single account. “Apple reported a user who was distributing CSAM content and was subsequently banned,” the company said. It added that in 2026 it removed more than 337,900 groups and channels related to CSAM, in addition to the 29,640 removals in 2025 resulting from reports by groups such as the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games and a longtime critic of App Store policies—partly due to his own antitrust dispute with Apple—argued on X that the app’s removal highlights the need for more competition in app distribution. “Apple’s App Store desperately needs global competition,” Sweeney wrote. “Apple is arbitrarily removing a vital communication and privacy tool from a billion users, and sadly, this is common practice.”
He further questioned the consistency of the criteria used by Apple, noting that the company “has not explained how communication apps, including iMessage, could function at a large scale if this is the standard for app removal.”
Monday’s action is reminiscent of a removal in February 2018, when Apple removed both Telegram and its client Telegram X because of what founder Pavel Durov called “inappropriate content” and only restored the apps after Telegram had implemented additional security measures.
