I’m curious if a Telegram bot can read messages in a channel where neither the bot nor I have admin access. I’ve been trying to find an answer to this for some time. I heard that until last November, this wasn’t possible, but I’ve come across discussions suggesting that some individuals have figured out how to make it work. Despite my attempts, I haven’t succeeded yet. Has anyone here managed to do something similar? I’d appreciate any creative ideas or suggestions for workarounds. Your help would mean a lot since I’m feeling quite stuck.
No, legit Telegram bots can’t access channel messages without proper permissions. The API enforces this hard and nothing’s changed recently. When people claim they’ve found workarounds, they’re usually talking about using user accounts with automation tools instead of actual bots. That breaks Telegram’s ToS and can get you suspended. I’ve worked on several bot projects - the permissions are rigid by design. If you need to monitor a channel, either get your bot added as admin or find another approach that doesn’t need direct message access.
sadly there’s no way around it. telegram locked this down tight for privacy reasons, and those “workarounds” people mention are usually just MTProto clients pretending to be regular users - which’ll get you banned fast. i tried this myself last year and hit the same wall.
i get what u mean! but yeah, for real bots, they gotta be part of the channel to access msgs. any claims about bypassing that are likely just users posing as bots or something like that.
Dealt with this same problem six months back while building a monitoring system. Short answer: no. Legit Telegram bots can’t access channel messages without admin privileges - it’s built into the Bot API and hasn’t changed. What you’re seeing in those discussions? People mixing up automated user sessions (Telethon, Pyrogram) with actual bot accounts. Sure, user-based solutions work, but they break Telegram’s TOS and you’ll get banned. I had to scrap my whole approach and work directly with channel owners for proper bot permissions. No magic workaround exists.
From what I’ve seen with Telegram integrations, legit bots can’t read channel messages unless they’re added as admins with the right permissions. The Bot API is pretty strict about this - nothing’s changed recently either. Those discussions you’re seeing probably mix up real bots with user account automation scripts (which break Telegram’s TOS). I’ve tested different approaches and the permission settings are intentionally locked down. If you need to monitor channel content, ask the channel owner to add your bot as admin or find workarounds like RSS feeds if the channel has them.