Downloading Channel Media

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Introduction

This vignette shows how to download media (photos/videos/documents) from a Telegram channel using download_channel_media().

Offline Demo (No Telegram Connection)

To keep this vignette fully reproducible, the output below is generated from a small bundled sample dataset. The commands shown are real; if you have credentials and a live session, you can run them by setting eval=TRUE in your environment.

Setup and Authentication

library(telegramR)
library(dplyr)

# Replace these with your own API ID and Hash
api_id <- 123456
api_hash <- "0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef"

client <- TelegramClient$new("my_session", api_id, api_hash)
client$start()

Download Media

# Download media into ./downloads
media <- download_channel_media(
  client,
  "telegram",
  limit = 200,
  media_types = c("photo", "video"),
  start_date = "2025-01-01",
  end_date = "2025-02-01",
  out_dir = tempdir()
)

# Inspect results
media
#> # A tibble: 2 × 9
#>   message_id channel_id channel_username channel_title date               
#>        <dbl>      <dbl> <chr>            <chr>         <dttm>             
#> 1      28508 1149277960 ShrikeNews       Шрайк Ньюс    2026-03-06 11:22:24
#> 2      28495 1149277960 ShrikeNews       Шрайк Ньюс    2026-03-06 08:48:16
#> # ℹ 4 more variables: media_type <chr>, file_path <chr>,
#> #   original_filename <chr>, error <chr>

photo_path <- media %>% 
  filter(media_type == "photo") %>% 
  slice(1) %>% 
  pull(file_path)

# In a real session with downloaded files, display the photo:
# knitr::include_graphics(file.path("..", photo_path))
cat("Photo path:", photo_path, "\n")
#> Photo path: NA
cat("(Photo display omitted in offline demo — run with eval=TRUE and real credentials to download.)\n")
#> (Photo display omitted in offline demo — run with eval=TRUE and real credentials to download.)

Common Columns

The result is a tibble with one row per downloaded media item. Typical columns include:

message_id, channel_id, channel_username, channel_title
date, text, media_type
file_path, error

Tips

Use start_date/end_date to restrict the window and speed up downloads.
Use media_types to select only photos or only videos.
If you hit rate limits, add a small wait_time (e.g., wait_time = 1).
Some channels send photos as documents (image/*). download_channel_media() treats image as a photo-type alias when photo is requested.

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.
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