How do I deselect the conversation in Telegram Desktop to avoid marking as read?

I have Telegram Desktop on my PC installed and after I've sent some chat messages I leave the window open in the background. However, keeping the conversation open marks all further incoming messages as read. No notification, no sound, and for the other party it is as if the window is in the foreground and I'm actively reading them. This results in missing messages regularly. 😕

However, I noticed that when you start Telegram Desktop initially (cold start) it opens in a no-conversation-selected view. In the pane of the conversation it says "Select a chat to start messaging".

How do I get back to this state after I've been in a conversation, ie deselecting a conversation (unfocus or whatever you want to call it)? I cannot believe I'm the only one struggling with this, so I'm asking here. 😬🙏

I've tried:

• Hold Shift/Control while clicking a conversation.
• Press Esc in the conversation.

If you right-click the chat/group you are currently in on the left, one of the items will say: Mark as unread. When you click this, it will bring you to the no chat is selected view and add a blue unread with no number indicator to that chat. If you click it again, it is automatically marked as read and the blue circle disappears.

When new messages arrive, the number of new messages are displayed inside the blue circle.

If you don't want the blue icon to be visible on this group, but you want to go to this view, then you can first go to the Telegram channel. This is the channel that tells you an update is ready. In this channel, you DO get notifications for your other chats even if you don't mark the telegram chat as unread and just stay in that chat. That is basically what I do. But marking it unread to get to the default screen looks better for sure.