I’m working on a telegram bot and running into an issue. The bot works perfectly when people send messages directly to it in private conversations. However, when the bot is added to a group chat, it doesn’t seem to pick up any messages that users post in the group.
I’ve checked my code and the private message handling works fine. But for some reason, group messages aren’t being received at all. Is there a specific setting or permission I need to enable? Maybe there’s a different API endpoint for group messages?
I’m using the standard telegram bot API. Do I need to configure something special for group chat functionality? Any help would be appreciated since I can’t figure out what I’m missing here.
yep, i had this issue too. it’s all about the privacy settings in botfather. just disable the privacy mode and ur bot will catch all group messages. really simple fix, trust me!
Had the exact same problem last year when deploying my first group bot. The privacy mode setting is definitely the culprit here, but there’s another aspect worth mentioning. Even after disabling privacy mode through BotFather, you might need to remove the bot from the group and add it back again for the changes to take effect properly. I spent hours debugging my webhook configuration thinking the issue was in my code, when it was just that the group hadn’t refreshed the bot permissions. Also worth noting that if you’re using webhooks instead of polling, double-check that your webhook URL is accessible and returning proper HTTP status codes. Sometimes group message failures can mask underlying webhook connectivity issues that don’t surface with private messages.
This is a common issue that caught me off guard when I first started developing telegram bots. The problem is likely related to privacy mode being enabled on your bot. By default, bots in groups only receive messages that are directly addressed to them (like /command or @botname) unless privacy mode is disabled. You need to contact @BotFather and use the /setprivacy command for your bot. Set it to disabled if you want your bot to see all messages in the group. Keep in mind this has security implications since your bot will process every single message in the group, so make sure that’s actually what you need. Alternatively, if you only need the bot to respond to specific commands or mentions, you can keep privacy mode enabled and just modify your code to handle commands and mentions specifically. This approach is generally more efficient and respects user privacy better.