Telegram Media Downloader

Free and open source under the MIT licence: the source code ships in the same archive as the program.

Telegram Media Downloader logs in to your Telegram account and saves files from your chats to disk — once, when you ask, or on its own, on a timer, from the people you pick. Along the way it records the text of your conversations and builds them into a single, searchable report. It is a tool for people who get their work sent to them over Telegram: files stop getting buried in chats, and the message you need turns up in a second.

Open source

A program that logs in to your Telegram account should not be a black box. Telegram Media Downloader is open source under the MIT licence, and the source code ships in the same archive as the program, together with a one-click build script (build.bat). Anyone can read what it does with the account and build the exe themselves. There is no telemetry: the program talks only to Telegram's servers, using your own API keys.

What it downloads

Choose a chat, channel or group, set the dates and the file types — video, photos, documents, archives, audio — and press Scan. The program shows how much is there and how much is new; Download fetches it, several files at a time. Each chat's files go into their own folder, sorted into a folder per day, with a mark for who sent each file — you or the other person. You can save the conversation text as well: one HTML page per day, sitting next to that day's files.

Monitoring: incoming files that collect themselves

The second tab is a list of people and groups the program watches by itself. Every few minutes — anything from 1 to 60, five by default — it checks them and fetches new files of the ticked types, each contact into its own folder. This earns its keep when a job has many people on it and they all send files to your private chat: revisions, source files, renders pile up on disk without you lifting a finger. The program can start with Windows and run from the tray, so the newest files are already downloaded by the time you reach your desktop.

A conversation report, and search across every chat at once

The History Machine button gathers your conversations with monitored contacts over a chosen period into one HTML page. It opens in a browser with a double-click and needs no internet. Inside are the conversations by contact, a feed of every day at once, and — the part Telegram itself lacks — search across all your conversations together. Telegram only searches inside one chat; here you type a word and see every match across every person, each with a jump to that point in the talk. The report is built from a local journal that fills up while monitoring runs.

Loading past history — new in 2.20.0

The journal starts filling from the moment you begin watching a contact, so anything earlier does not reach the report by default. Version 2.20.0 fixes that: right-click a contact, choose Load chat history into the journal, and pick a start date or tick From the very beginning of the chat. The program reads the conversation from Telegram and writes only the text and message details into the journal. No files are downloaded, the monitoring start date is left alone, and loading again spoils nothing. After that, the report and its search reach back to well before you ever installed the program.

Replacements, edits and deletions — nothing is lost

The program never wipes what it has already saved. If someone swaps a file — sends a different one under the same name — the new file is downloaded and the old one stays beside it, renamed with an _old suffix. An edited message is marked "edited" (hover over the mark to see the first version of the text); a deleted one is marked "deleted", struck through and outlined with a dashed line, but kept in the archive. What you end up with is an honest record of the conversation, not the version left behind after someone else's edits.

Your session is kept safely

The credentials for your Telegram login do not sit next to the program — they live in your private Windows profile, and the authorization key is encrypted by Windows itself (DPAPI) for your account on this computer. You can zip up the program folder and hand it to someone else without your account access travelling with it. On another machine, or under another user, a copy of the key is useless.

What it does not do

• It sends nothing and posts nothing to Telegram on your behalf — it only reads your account and saves files to disk.
• It deletes no files and no messages: deletions are only marked, replacements are kept alongside.
• It uploads nothing to the cloud and hands your data to no one — reports live on your disk and search works offline.
• It does not carry your session to another computer: after a Windows reinstall or a new PC you log in again. That is on purpose.
• It runs on Windows only and works with your own account only (you need free API keys and a one-time login by phone number).

At a glance

• System: Windows 10 and 11
• Format: portable, no installer
• Size: 54 MB
• Interface languages: Russian and English (switched in Settings, applied after a restart)
• Licence: free, open source (MIT), source code in the archive