Can't Keep Up with Your Telegram Chat? Read the Summary and Open Only What You Need

Four hundred new messages landed in the chat overnight. You don’t have time to read them all, and you’re afraid of missing something: someone may be waiting for your reply, two members may have fallen out, or people may dislike the new rule. A summary shows what was discussed, and you open only what you need. Below is how to set this up and what else you can do with a summary.

I can’t keep up with my Telegram chat. What should I do?

Hand the summary over to a bot. It turns hundreds of messages into topics, and they show at once what you can skip and what is worth opening. For example, hundreds of messages in a marketers’ chat might fit into four topics: which ad format to choose, where to buy it, how to check a channel for fake subscribers, and how to measure the result.

Telegram itself doesn’t summarize groups, so you need a bot. A convenient option is «Essence» Bot: an overview for the period you choose arrives in your private chat. We compared other delivery methods in a separate article.

Open digests in the bot and choose your group: in the bot, this feature is called a digest, and the finished summary is called an overview. The bot joins the group as an ordinary member and doesn’t need admin rights. Enable the digest, and the bot will post once in the group that it has been connected and what data it processes.
Only messages written after you enable it will go into the overview. The bot won’t read anything that was in the chat earlier, so enable the digest in advance, before you need a summary.

How do I stay on top of what’s happening in the chat without spending so much time on it?

Open the group in digests, tap “Request digest”, choose a period, and confirm. You can pick 6 hours, a day, 3 days, or a week, or set your own dates, up to 30 days. Overviews have no schedule yet.

Skim the topics and open only what concerns you: each topic in the overview has a link to the original messages. If the group is a basic group rather than a supergroup, there are no links, and the “Original” button sends up to three key messages of the topic to your chat with the bot.

Can the bot mix up who said what?

If people in the chat disagree, the overview will show the different opinions. If one person suggested something, the bot will say exactly that and won’t present it as a decision of the whole chat. We do everything we can to keep it working reliably so that you can trust the overviews. Any retelling can miss a detail, so before you reply to someone or refer to someone’s words, open the original messages.

The overview is built from texts and captions. Voice messages and attachment contents don’t go into it, so in a chat that lives on voice messages the summary will show only part of the conversation.

How do I make a weekly recap for chat members?

Members don’t read the whole chat either, so the same overview will be useful to them too. In the digest settings, connect the group as a delivery destination. Request an overview for a week, tap “Change recipients”, and select the group. In a group with topics, you can send the overview to a separate topic so the recap doesn’t get lost in the conversation.

The bot asks you to choose recipients anew each time, so nothing will go to the chat by accident. However many recipients you choose, one overview is used. If you want to check the text first, request the overview only for yourself and post it in the chat on your own. You can also send the overview to a connected channel or take a topic for a post from it.

How do I make a summary of just one topic?

In a group with topics, the overview is divided into sections, one per topic. If you need only one, switch the digest from all topics to selected ones and check it. The bot will post in the group that the set of topics has changed.

After that it doesn’t collect the texts of the other topics, so you won’t be able to get an overview of them retroactively. In this mode, new topics are added manually.

Can I get the summary in my language if the chat is in another one?

Yes. The overview language is set in the digest settings, and it can be any of the bot’s languages. Members can write in one language while the overview arrives in another.

How much does a chat summary cost and how often can I get one?

The trial is free: 5 days, one group, and 5 overviews. If you’re new to the bot, it starts when you enable a digest. The bot collects messages from that same moment, so you won’t get a full overview for a week during the trial.

After that you need a subscription: without one, the bot stops collecting messages, and what it misses can’t be recovered later.

• Basic, $4 for 30 days: up to 10 groups and channels and 10 overviews.
• Pro, $16 for 30 days: up to 20 groups and channels and 20 overviews.

Overviews are shared across all your groups and channels. On Basic, one overview every three days is enough for one chat, but then nothing is left for a weekly recap. If you publish recaps, request a weekly overview for yourself and the chat: that’s four or five overviews a month, and the rest will come in handy when something happens in the chat. One overview every three days together with a weekly recap fits within Pro. Prices and limits are as of November 1, 2026.

A couple of days after you enable it, instead of hundreds of messages you’ll have a list of topics, and you’ll know what the chat is talking about and which conversations to open.