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telegramR

telegramR is an R client for Telegram’s MTProto API. It is intended as an R alternative to Python’s Telethon and focuses on full-client functionality (not the Bot API).

Install

From CRAN (once accepted):

install.packages("telegramR")

From GitHub (development version):

# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("RomanKyrychenko/telegramR")

Prerequisites

You need Telegram API credentials from my.telegram.org:

• api_id
• api_hash

Quick Start (Login)

library(telegramR)

api_id   <- 123456
api_hash <- "0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef"

# Create a client. The session file stores your auth key so you
# don't need to re-login every time.
client <- TelegramClient$new(
  session  = "my_session",
  api_id   = api_id,
  api_hash = api_hash
)

# Connect and log in interactively.
# You will be prompted for your phone number, the login code Telegram
# sends you, and (if enabled) your 2FA password.
client$start()

You can also supply the phone number and a code callback explicitly:

client$start(
  phone         = "+15551234567",
  code_callback = function() readline("Enter the code: ")
)

If your account has 2FA enabled, pass password:

client$start(
  phone    = "+15551234567",
  password = "my2FApassword"
)

Step-by-step login (non-interactive)

If you prefer full control over each step:

client <- TelegramClient$new("my_session", api_id = api_id, api_hash = api_hash)
client$connect()

# Request a login code
client$send_code_request("+15551234567")

# Sign in with the code you received
client$sign_in("+15551234567", code = "12345")

Download messages from a channel

Use high‑level helpers to fetch channel data as tibbles:

library(telegramR)

msgs <- download_channel_messages(
  client,
  "telegram",
  limit = 200
)

msgs

The result contains a compact schema:

• message_id, date, text
• views, forwards, replies
• reactions_total, reactions_json
• media_type, is_forward, forward_from_id, forward_from_message_id, forward_saved_from_message_id, forward_from_name
• reply_to_msg_id, edit_date, post_author
• channel_id, channel_username, channel_title

You can also fetch channel info:

info <- download_channel_info(client, "telegram")
info

Filter by date range:

msgs <- download_channel_messages(
  client,
  "telegram",
  start_date = "2025-01-01",
  end_date   = "2025-02-01",
  limit      = Inf
)

And get an approximate post count (upper bound) without downloading everything:

estimate_channel_post_count(client, "telegram")

Reactions, replies, and members

reactions <- download_channel_reactions(client, "telegram", limit = 500)
replies <- download_channel_replies(client, "telegram", message_limit = 50)
members <- download_channel_members(client, "telegram", limit = 1000)
media <- download_channel_media(client, "telegram", limit = 200, out_dir = "downloads")

All helpers accept a numeric channel id when it is available in your session cache:

msgs_by_id <- download_channel_messages(client, 1234567890, limit = 100)

Download media

dir.create("downloads", showWarnings = FALSE)

media <- download_channel_media(
  client,
  "telegram",
  limit = 200,
  media_types = c("photo", "video"),
  start_date = "2025-01-01",
  end_date = "2025-02-01",
  out_dir = "downloads"
)

head(media)

You can also download directly from raw messages:

for (m in messages) {
  if (!is.null(m$media)) {
    future::value(client$download_media(m, file = "downloads/"))
  }
}

Notes

• Sessions are persisted to the file you pass to TelegramClient$new(). Remove that file to force a fresh login.
• Be mindful of Telegram rate limits when downloading large histories or media collections. Add Sys.sleep() between requests.
• Most high-level methods (like get_entity, download_media) return future objects. Unwrap them with future::value().
• To silence pump/process debug messages, keep these options disabled: options(telegramR.debug_pump = FALSE, telegramR.debug_process = FALSE, telegramR.debug_parse = FALSE).
• To trace hangs in channel info/message downloads, enable: options(telegramR.trace_hang = TRUE, telegramR.trace_parse = TRUE) to see step-by-step parsing and network waits.
• Some channels send photos as documents with image/* MIME types. download_channel_media() treats image as a photo-type alias when photo is requested.

Citation

In R, use:

citation("telegramR")

GitHub and reference managers can also read the repository’s CITATION.cff.

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.