I’m working on a Telegram bot and I need to track when users react to messages. I want to know if there’s a way to receive notifications about reactions through the bot API.
Specifically, I’m looking for:
Updates when someone reacts to messages sent by my bot
Any reaction changes in channels or groups where my bot is a member
I’ve been using both webhook and polling methods to get updates, but I can’t find reaction data in the standard update object structure. The getUpdates method doesn’t seem to include reaction information in its response.
Has anyone managed to implement reaction tracking in their Telegram bots? Is there a specific update type or method I’m missing?
yeah, sadly reactions aint part of the bot api yet. u might wanna look into telegram’s business api if u wanna track that stuff. for now, just getting users to respond with emojis can be a workaround lol!
The Bot API doesn’t support reaction tracking at all. This has been a known limitation forever, and tons of developers keep asking for it. I’ve been working with Telegram bots for three years and this question pops up constantly in dev communities. The official docs confirm that reaction events just aren’t exposed to bots - no webhooks, no polling, nothing. Some devs tried using MTProto libraries to monitor channel posts instead, but that breaks Telegram’s ToS and can get your bot banned. You’re stuck waiting for Telegram to add this feature or building custom engagement tracking with bot commands and inline keyboards instead.
Nope, message reactions aren’t available through the Telegram Bot API yet. The API doesn’t include reaction updates in any of the update types, which is why you’re not seeing them in getUpdates or webhooks. I ran into this exact issue when building a community bot last year. Reactions work for regular users and channels, but bots get limited permissions and data access. What I did instead was create inline keyboards with reaction-style buttons under messages. It’s not as smooth as native reactions, but it reliably tracks user engagement and works in all chat types where your bot has the right permissions.