How to put all your Telegram channels into one feed — or into several, by topic

To find out what is new in twenty Telegram channels, you have to open all twenty: Telegram has no subscriptions feed, and every channel lives in its own chat. You can build a feed, but not with Telegram’s own tools: posts from different channels are merged into one stream by a third-party tool, such as a bot.

It is worth building it wisely, though. If you pour everything into one feed, the news that your metro line is closing for repairs will end up between a meme and a forty-paragraph breakdown of a new neural network, and reading such a feed will be no easier than going through the channels. So first think about where it is convenient for you to read the feed and whether news and memes should go into separate feeds. We will start there, and then build the feed itself step by step.

When a folder is enough and when you need a feed

A Telegram folder gathers channels into one list, but you still read them one at a time. At the end of a channel you can pull the screen up, and Telegram opens the next unread channel, starting with the current folder (Telegram blog, 2021). The path between channels gets shorter, but posts from different channels do not come together in one stream.

Our view: a folder is enough if you have few channels and read each one straight through, like a magazine. You need a feed if new posts are spread in a thin layer across dozens of channels. You can tell which case is yours in one evening: count how many channels you opened and how many posts you read in them. If the numbers are almost equal, you spend more time opening and closing chats than reading, and a folder will not fix that. If, on the other hand, a couple of channels have twenty posts each and you read them straight through, it is more convenient to keep those channels in the folder: in a shared feed their posts will mix with others, and you will have to piece the author’s thought together. What else a separate channel chat is good for, we discussed in the article “Telegram has no shared channel feed. Is that good or bad?”.

Even if you decide to build a feed, do not rush to delete the folder: with a link to it you can add its channels to the bot all at once. More on that below, in the setup steps.

Where posts will arrive: in a chat with a bot, in your own channel or in a group

An intermediary builds the feed for you. For example, «Essence» Bot: you give it a list of channels, it watches them and sends every new post wherever you tell it to. There are three places, and one question decides between them: who will read the feed.

Just you — a personal chat with the bot. The simplest option: you do not need to set up anything besides the bot. New posts from all channels arrive in one chat, each shows which channel it came from and has a link to the original. You do not need to subscribe to public channels: the bot reads them, so you can remove them from your chat list.

You, but in a separate chat — your own channel. Create a channel, private if you like, and the bot will publish new posts from the selected channels in it. In your chat list it is an ordinary channel with its own unread counter. This option is for when you will have several feeds (more on that in the next section) or when you want to share the selection: invite people who will find it useful too.

You together with others — your own group. The bot publishes posts in the group under its own name, and members discuss them right there without forwarding them to each other. This suits, for example, a team that follows the same industry channels.

What arrives in a channel or group is a copy of the post with a link to the source, not a Telegram forward.

If you would rather read outside Telegram, a public channel can be turned into an RSS feed that you subscribe to in an RSS reader. And if you need your own scheme with rules, filters and schedules, it is built in automation builders: how they differ from ready-made scenarios, we covered in the comparison of Junction Bot and «Essence» Bot.

One feed for everything or a feed for each topic

One feed is enough if you read everything in one sitting and your topics are close. But if you need news in the morning, work channels during the day and memes and long breakdowns in the evening, one shared feed will keep serving you the wrong thing: getting in the way with memes in the morning and with breaking news in the evening. Then it is better to split the feed. In our view, split it not so much by topic as by when you read it. Three or four feeds are usually enough: “Morning”, “Work” and “Evening” are more convenient than a dozen narrow sections that you would have to go through one by one, the way you used to go through channels.

There are two ways to split the feed.

A separate channel for each feed. Create, for example, three private channels — “Morning”, “Work”, “Evening” — and connect each one to the bot as an auto-publishing destination. For each destination you select its own set of sources: news channels go to “Morning”, humour and breakdowns to “Evening”. Three feeds appear in your chat list, each with its own unread counter, and each ends at its own last post. On any plan you can connect up to 10 such channels and groups.

One feed and hashtags. If you do not want to set up separate chats, put hashtags on your sources, for example #morning and #evening. The tag appears under every summary in your personal chat with the bot, and tapping it shows all summaries from the channels with that tag. New posts still arrive mixed together: a hashtag helps you find what you need, but it does not sort the stream onto shelves. More in the article about hashtags.

In both cases the feed is defined by a set of channels, not by the content of posts: the bot cannot pick out individual posts by topic. A channel that writes about both politics and memes will go into one feed as a whole, so decide in advance which one.

How to build the feed: five steps

1. Start with a short list. Do not move all your subscriptions into the feed at once: then posts from all your channels will end up mixed together in it, and reading it will be no easier than going through them one by one. Take the channels you already open almost every day, and add the rest when you notice you are missing them. How to tell which sources really affect your affairs is explained in the article about the first pass.
2. Add the channels to the bot. The fastest way is through a Telegram folder. Gather the public channels you need into a folder and create a link for it: Telegram lets you share folders (Telegram blog, 2023). Send this link to the bot, and it will add the public channels from the folder all at once and also suggest a shared hashtag for them. You can also add a single channel: send the bot its username or link. How many channels fit depends on the plan: 5 during the trial, 20 on Basic and 100 on Pro.
3. Connect private channels if you need them. The bot cannot enter a closed channel on its own, so it reads it through your account. After the first public channel, open “Settings” → “Personal Telegram account” in the bot, sign in, choose the channel and separately allow it to be processed. From a private channel you receive only processed text, without the original or attachments. What you entrust to the service and how to revoke access is covered in the article about connecting your account.
4. Decide what form posts arrive in. For the personal chat and for each public channel you can choose a short summary or the original text. We recommend starting with summaries: the feed gets shorter, and a summary shows whether the original is worth opening. Keep the original text for channels where every word matters, such as official announcements.
5. If the feed will live in your own channel or group, connect them. Add the channel or group in the bot as an auto-publishing destination, select its sources and wait for the test post: it shows that the bot can publish there. Format and summary language are chosen for each destination separately, and a private source has to be allowed separately for each destination. Which rights you and the bot need is listed in the article about auto-publishing.

When the first posts arrive, check one thing: each shows which channel it came from and has a link to the original. Then the feed does not lose context: if a post continues yesterday’s conversation, the beginning can be found in the channel itself.

What happens to repeats

The same news from several channels may arrive several times. In your personal chat with the bot, the “Hide duplicates” switch helps: identical texts do not reappear in the bot’s personal feed or on the website for 48 hours. But it only catches word-for-word text: if channels wrote about the news in their own words, all versions will arrive. In your own channels and groups this filter does not work. So it is more reliable not to keep channels in the feed that reprint the same sources.

Where to start

Start with the personal chat, it is the fastest. Open «Essence» Bot, send it a link to a folder with the channels you read every day, and after a couple of days see what life with one feed is like. You do not need to subscribe to public channels, you can choose a summary or the original text for each channel, and each post shows where it came from and has a link to the original. The trial is free: 5 days and up to 5 channels, so a small folder is enough to start. The countdown starts with the first channel you add. A summary may miss a detail, so where your decision depends on a post, open the original.

If the feed sticks and you want to split it by topic, you will not have to start over: the channels are already added, all that is left is to create your own channels for the feeds and select sources for each. Instead of fifty chats you will have one feed or several, each with its own place and its own end.