Telegram Channels

Channels are a tool for broadcasting your public messages to large audiences. They offer a unique opportunity to reach people directly, sending a notification to their phones with each post.

Telegram Channels can have an unlimited amount of subscribers, and only admins have the right to post. Unlike Telegram Groups, channels show the name and photo of the channel next to messages – instead of the person who posted them.

Media organizations and public figures use channels to stay in touch with their readers, voters and fans. For some real-life examples, check out @Bloomberg, the Coronavirus Info channel, or join the official @Telegram channel covering our updates.

To create your own channel, open the “New Message” menu on Telegram and choose “New Channel”. Newly created channels start as private – but you can edit their profile to make them public.

The contents of public channels can be seen on the Web without a Telegram account and are indexed by search engines. For example, try t.me/s/FinancialTimes.

Autoplaying Videos and Rich Media

Channels aren't just for text messages and links – Telegram supports a wide range of content types, from autoplaying videos to animated stickers, polls and beyond.

Videos will start playing automatically with no sound. Pressing the volume buttons on the device unmutes the video, tapping on it launches the video from the beginning in full screen mode.

Several photos sent together will form an album with a beautiful layout – and only result in one notification to your subscribers for the whole batch.

You can send large files of any type and uncompressed images in full resolution – useful for content like infographics.

Podcasts also get special treatment. Telegram apps remember your last position when resuming playback of long audio files. Users who are in a hurry can listen to them at 2x speed:

Quick Sharing

Each post in a channel has a handy Share Button next to it, making it easy for your subscribers to forward things to others – or save them in their Saved Messages.

The Quick Share menu also shows a direct link to your post. Following such links inside Telegram opens the channel and highlights the message. If the user doesn't have Telegram, they will see a web page with an embedded post, like this: t.me/corona/16.

Powerful Polls

You can use polls to judge public opinion, make decisions and help your audience connect with you.

Quiz-Style Polls

To make things more fun – or add extra educational value to your posts – use quiz-style polls that have one correct answer.

Discussion Groups

If you'd like to know what people think about the posts they view, you can set up a discussion group for your channel. Subscribers will see a “Discuss” link in the bottom panel. New posts from the channel will be automatically forwarded to the group and pinned there.

Alternatively, you can add @discussbot as an admin to your channel to get comment buttons under the posts you publish.

View Counters

Each post in a channel has a view counter. Views from forwarded copies of the messages are included in the total count.

Detailed Statistics

Advanced statistics are available for channels with more than 1000 subscribers. You can view beautifully-detailed graphs about its growth and the performance of its posts.

You can track how many users join, leave and mute your channel, what languages they speak, how they interact with your posts, and how they found your channel – from Telegram search, by following a link, etc.

Scheduled and Silent Messages

You can plan your posts ahead and let them go live automatically at a specified time. For late night or non-urgent updates, you can send silent messages that will result in a notification with no sound for your subscribers.

Hold the “Send” button for extra sending options:

Pinned Messages

You can pin a message for extra visibility.

Hashtags

Telegram supports hashtags – tapping on a hashtag in a message will show a search interface with all other tagged posts in the channel. This is useful for adding a layer of navigation for your channel and improving visibility of your older posts.

Subscriber Privacy

The subscriber list is only visible to the channel owner and admins. Subscribers cannot see who else has signed up – nor can they see which accounts are managing the channel.

Extra Admins

You can appoint additional admins to help you manage the channel and define their role with granular precision. Choose who will be able to add new subscribers, manage messages, edit channel info, or even add new admins.

Admin Signatures

There are times when it‘s important to know who posted a certain message. For that, you can enable signatures in Channel Info. New messages will be signed with the posting admin’s chosen screen name but will not link to their profile.

Embedded Messages

Messages from public channels can be easily embedded in any web page using Telegram Widgets.

Editing Messages

Made a typo? Missed a word? Itching to add something? You can easily edit your messages within 48 hours after they were posted. Tap the message (double tap or long tap on iOS), then press ‘Edit’.

Deleting Messages

If you'd like to do a bit of timeline maintenance, you can delete any message at any time, for everyone. Deleted messages will vanish from the feed, for both new and old subscribers.