Telescope: Channel Videos in One Command

You spot a round video in a channel and want to watch the rest of that author's clips, but scrolling up through months of posts is slow. Telescope gathers a public channel's video messages in one list, and you only need a single command. 🎥

The bot calls itself experimental, and that is a fair description. It is a window into the Telescope platform that Telegram launched together with video messages in version 4.0 back in 2017.

The platform behind the bot

When the owner of a public channel records a round video, it does not stay only in the channel. The clip is also uploaded to the Telescope platform and gets its own public web page.

Every public channel has such a page with its video messages. You can watch them in a browser even if Telegram is not installed. The round clips play automatically and run up to one minute, the same format as video messages in chats.

One command, every clip of a channel

The main command is /show followed by a channel name. The bot replies with the list of videos from that channel, so you skip the endless scrolling through old posts.

This works only for public channels, because the platform publishes just their video messages. A private channel or a chat will never show up, and that is how Telegram privacy is meant to work. 🔒

Every command at a glance

• /show: list all videos of a channel, with the channel name after the command.
• /new: the latest 5 links added to the bot.
• /help: a short help message.
• /support: contact the developers if something breaks or you have an idea.
• /about: information about the bot.

The set is small, which makes it easy to learn in a minute. There is no keyword search, statistics page or settings menu in the command list, so do not expect those.

Your first watch session

1. Open the bot and tap Start.
2. Send /show, a space, then the name of a public channel with the at sign.
3. Wait for the list and open the clip you want.
4. To see fresh additions, send /new.

If the list comes back empty, the channel may have no round videos at all. Try another channel whose authors record video messages regularly. 👀

Who gets the most out of it

Viewers can go through the video archive of a favorite author in order, without digging in the feed. That helps most with big channels, where the clip you remember sank under hundreds of posts.

Channel owners can check how their video collection looks and which clips got public pages. A link to a single clip is easy to pass to friends or to other social networks.

A word of caution about user video hosting

The platform stores videos uploaded by regular users. Quality and content depend on the channel author, and nobody reviews every clip in advance. Treat links the way you treat any stranger's post online. ⚠️

Never type passwords, codes from messages or card details on pages you reach through unknown links. Watching a video does not require any of that.

Because the bot is experimental, hiccups happen: a reply can arrive late or not at all. If that happens, wait a little and repeat the command, or write to the developers with /support.

Questions before the first launch

These are the things people usually ask first.