I’m working on a Python telegram bot and I’m having trouble figuring out how to check what permissions my bot has in private channels.
For public channels, I can use api.get_chat_admins() which gives me back a ChatMember object that shows the bot’s role and permissions. But this doesn’t seem to work the same way for private channels.
I need to determine if my bot is an admin, moderator, or just a regular member in private telegram channels. The bot needs to know its own role so it can decide what actions it’s allowed to perform.
Has anyone found a reliable way to get bot role information specifically for private channels? I’ve tried a few different approaches but nothing seems to work consistently for private channels like it does for public ones.
actually, there’s a simpler way - just use getChatMember with your bot’s user_id and catch the telegram.error.TelegramError exceptions. different errors tell you different things: ‘not enough rights’ vs ‘user not found’ vs success shows you exactly what access level your bot has. way better than testing random actions since you won’t spam the channel with failed attempts.
I ran into the same issue when building a channel management bot. Private channels are tricky because permissions limit what methods you can actually use based on your bot’s access level. I’ve found that getChatMember with the bot’s user ID works well for checking its role, even in private channels - but only if the bot can access member info. If your bot has minimal permissions, this won’t work. Try calling getChat first - if it succeeds, your bot has at least read permissions. Then you can test other actions to figure out what your bot can actually do. Just remember that private channels handle access restrictions way differently than public ones.
Private channels limit API access way more than public ones, so direct permission queries often fail. I solved this by testing permissions through actual actions instead of trying to query them directly. I wrap functions that attempt specific actions - like sending messages or pinning posts - then catch the exceptions to figure out what permissions I have. If send_message works but pin_chat_message throws a forbidden error, I know the bot’s got basic member access but no admin rights. It’s way more reliable than get_chat_admins for private channels since you’re testing what actually works instead of relying on API calls that might be blocked. You’ll need to handle different exception types, but you get accurate permission status that reflects real capabilities.