At Telegram, we made it our mission to redefine the boundaries of what you can do with your messaging app. Last year we launched the Bot Platform that has unleashed the creativity of thousands of developers.

Today we are giving bot developers a whole new dimension with Bots 2.0: inline keyboards, callback and URL buttons, location permissions and on-the-fly message editing. The new bots can also generate any type of content for you to share with friends, including documents, MP3s, videos, stickers, animations and contacts.

To give you a taste of the new possibilities, we built some sample bots last weekend – @music, @youtube, @foursquare and @sticker (make sure your Telegram app was updated today before you try them).

New Keyboards, New Actions

Here's how @music works – it uses an inline keyboard that allows you to interact with it without sending any messages. And it updates its own messages on the fly as you flip through the pages of search results:

New Types of Content

The @music bot also works in inline mode, which means it can help you send MP3s to any of your chats, right from the input field:

Inline bots can now send all types of attachments that are available on Telegram. We suspect you're going to like the @sticker inline bot – it can find you relevant stickers based on emoji.

New Mechanics

Like the @music bot, @youtube also works in two modes. It uses the new clever chat switching mechanic to connect your Telegram account with YouTube:

Once a Youtube account is connected, you can access additional settings via the new menu option above the results.

New Permissions

Now, @foursquare is an inline bot that utilizes our new location features and helps you send addresses of places and venues nearby. Note how it asks for permission to use your location when you try to send something for the first time:

New Horizons

These sample bots are but the beginning. Our Bot API 2.0 allows developers to create fluid and easy-to-use interfaces for powerful bots. And we will be seeing a lot of new ones in the coming months, after all, 2016 is the year of bots.

If you are a developer, take a look at our Introduction to Bots 2.0 and read the full changelog. Also, feel free to subscribe to our official @BotNews channel to stay up to date on platform news.

If you are a user, hang on – soon you will have plenty of cool bots to play with. Meanwhile, enjoy the sample bots!





Oh. And we almost forgot we've got more new stuff today!

Read on about Sharing and Previews »





April 12, 2016

The Telegram Team