telegram-download-chat 0.1.1

CLI utility for downloading Telegram chat history to JSON

Telegram Chat Downloader

A command-line utility to download Telegram chat history to JSON and TXT format.

Features

• Download complete chat history from any Telegram chat, group, or channel
• Save messages in JSON format with full message metadata
• Save messages in TXT format with user-friendly display names
• Simple configuration with YAML config file
• Support for resuming interrupted downloads

Installation

Using pip

pip install telegram-download-chat

Using uvx

uvx install git+https://github.com/popstas/telegram-download-chat.git

Configuration

API Credentials

To use this tool, you'll need to obtain API credentials from my.telegram.org:

1. Go to API Development Tools
2. Log in with your phone number
   • Important: Do not use a VPN when obtaining API credentials
3. Create a new application
4. Copy the api_id and api_hash to your config.yml

Configuration File (config.yml)

telegram_app:
  api_id: your_api_id       # Get from https://my.telegram.org
  api_hash: your_api_hash   # Get from https://my.telegram.org

# Map user IDs to display names for text exports
users_map:
  123456: "Alice"
  789012: "Bob"

# full settings: see config.example.yml

Usage

Basic Usage

python telegram-download-chat.py https://t.me/username

Command Line Options

usage: telegram-download-chat.py [-h] [-o OUTPUT] [--limit LIMIT] [--until DATE] [-s] chat

Download Telegram chat history to JSON

positional arguments:
  chat                  Chat identifier (group URL, @username, or invite link)

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
                        Output JSON filename (default: chat_history.json)
  --limit LIMIT         Number of messages per API request (50-1000, default: 500)
  --until DATE          Only download messages until this date (format: YYYY-MM-DD)
  -s, --silent          Suppress progress output (default: False)

Examples

# Download chat to default output file (chat_history.json)
python telegram-download-chat.py username

# Download messages until a specific date (exclusive)
python telegram-download-chat.py https://t.me/username --until 2025-05-01

# Combine with other options
python telegram-download-chat.py @username --limit 100 --until 2025-01-01 -o my_chat.json

Output Format

The tool generates two files for each chat:

1. [chat_name].json - Complete message data in JSON format
2. [chat_name].txt - Human-readable text version of the chat

Notes

• For the first run, you will need to log in to your Telegram account
• Session is saved in ./data/session.session
• For work requires Python 3.7+