Telegram Media Link Bot

Send or forward any file to the bot and it replies with a share link. Anyone who opens that link gets the file back, straight from Telegram's servers.

you → bot            bot → you                    friend opens link
[photo.jpg]          t.me/yourbot?start=Ab3xK9    [photo.jpg]

Nothing is re-uploaded or stored on your disk. The bot keeps Telegram's file_id and re-sends it, so delivery is instant and costs no bandwidth.

Features

Admin panel — an inline keyboard inside the chat, no web UI.

• Media library with rename, enable/disable, preview and delete
• Captions per item, plus a global template that wraps them
• Photo watermark — tiled low-opacity text, applied on delivery and cached
• Auto-delete — remove delivered media after a delay you choose
• Join gate — require channel membership before a link pays out
• Statistics — today / 7d / 30d / all time
• Broadcast — throttled and cancellable, with a test-send to yourself first
• Admins — add and remove, with a permanent owner

Regular users only ever see links working. No internals leak into their view.

Quick start

Needs Docker and a bot token from @BotFather.

git clone https://github.com/abolix/TelegramDownloaderBot.git
cd TelegramDownloaderBot

cp .env.example .env
nano .env                       # set BOT_TOKEN and OWNER_ID

mkdir -p data
sudo chown -R 10001:10001 data  # the container runs as uid 10001

docker compose up -d --build
docker compose logs -f

Then message your bot /panel.

OWNER_ID is your numeric Telegram id. Send /id to the bot to find it.

Running without Docker

python -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate            # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

cp .env.example .env            # set BOT_TOKEN and OWNER_ID
python -m bot

Developed and tested on Python 3.14, which is what the image pins.

python -m bot.preflight         # check the token and connectivity
pip install -r requirements-dev.txt && pytest

Configuration

Only deploy-time settings live in .env. Everything else is in the panel.

Variable	Required	Notes
BOT_TOKEN	yes	From @BotFather
OWNER_ID	yes	Permanent admin, cannot be removed
PROXY_URL	no	For local use where Telegram is blocked. Leave empty when deployed
DATA_DIR	no	Defaults to data
LOG_LEVEL	no	INFO by default

Auto-delete, captions, watermark and the join gate are all set from the panel and stored in the database. They apply immediately, with no restart.

Commands

/start	Open the bot, or redeem a media link
/help	What the bot does
/id	Your numeric user id
/panel	Admin panel (admins only)
/stats	Statistics (admins only)

Updating

git pull
docker compose up -d --build

Changed only .env? Then docker compose up -d is enough — but note that docker compose restart will not pick it up, because env_file is read when the container is created, not when it starts.

Data and backups

Everything lives in one SQLite file, data/bot.db. Back it up by copying that file while the bot is stopped; a clean shutdown folds the write-ahead log back in, so the single file is complete.

Two things worth knowing:

• file_ids are tied to your bot token. Change BOT_TOKEN and every saved link breaks. Keep the token and the database together.
• One instance per token. Telegram allows a single poller, so running the bot in two places at once produces 409 conflicts.