Add support for Telegram (t.me)

[jasomdotnet]

• I'm reporting a new site support request
• I've verified that I'm running youtube-dl version 2019.11.28
• I've checked that all provided URLs are alive and playable in a browser
• I've checked that none of provided URLs violate any copyrights
• I've searched the bugtracker for similar site support requests including closed ones (yes, nothing)

Example URLs

• Single video: https://t.me/police_frequency/19788
• Single video: https://t.me/police_frequency/19676

Description

Hi, add support for Telegram. It's social network with more then 200 million users. See this press release: https://telegram.org/blog/200-million Twitter or Instagram is similar service like Telegram.

[ghost]

Telegram is not video streaming website, Telegram is not a social network, Telegram is a instant messaging system, with it's own transport protocol.

You can't watch videos by just clicking on "t.me/xxx" link, because there is no video streaming on t.me website - all video's accessible only using telegram protocol(you must have installed client, or use web-client), not directly via http(-s).

Implementing this is different from main goal and current architecture of YouTube-dl, also it requires adding some pretty huge Telegram client library to youtube-dl dependencies(like Telethon or pyrogram).

Also, I think, it's don't have any practical purpose - inside telegram you can literally just right-click and select "download" on any video - there is no any downloading restriction's like on streaming websites.

[jasomdotnet]

Also, I think, it's don't have any practical purpose - inside telegram you can literally just right-click and select "download" on any video - there is no any downloading restriction's like on streaming websites.

I found out this later.

[jasomdotnet]

Leaving this open if anybody wants to add additional comments

[Linux-joy]

Hi @sergey-rufanov,

You can't watch videos by just clicking on "t.me/xxx" link, because there is no video streaming on t.me website - all video's accessible only using telegram protocol(you must have installed client, or use web-client), not directly via http(-s).

If I access t.me messages with my firefox browser and if they embed videos or voice messages, I can watch/hear them directly within the browser. So, videos or voice messages might accessed via http(-s) by the browser – ant not via telegram protocol? Or, the telegram protocol is build in the browser?

Also, I think, it's don't have any practical purpose - inside telegram you can literally just right-click and select "download" on any video - there is no any downloading restriction's like on streaming websites.

But I think it might have a practical purpose: On my desktop computer (in my case the OS is Linux, but I think that there would be a real purpose for other OSs, too) I want to watch/hear telegram videos or voice messages on an external application like mpv for better (means: more exactly) forward/backwards skipping inside the videos or voice messages. mpv uses youtube-dl to access to videos etc. and then play them without downloading them permanently. If I actually want to cause a familar behaviour, I first have to download the video etc. to my "/tmp"-directory and then access to it via mpv or a similar application. So, to simplify the whole procedure, the Telegram (t.me) support should be added to youtube-dl.

[aatv]

ytdl is compatible with t.me/xyz/123 media content when you add ?embed=1 suffix:

youtube-dl https://t.me/police_frequency/19788?embed=1

[generic] 19788?embed=1: Requesting header
WARNING: Could not send HEAD request to https://t.me/police_frequency/19788?embed=1: HTTP Error 501: Not Implemented
[generic] 19788?embed=1: Downloading webpage
WARNING: Falling back on generic information extractor.
[generic] 19788?embed=1: Extracting information
[download] Downloading playlist: Telegram Widget
[generic] playlist Telegram Widget: Collected 1 video ids (downloading 1 of them)
[download] Downloading video 1 of 1
[download] Destination: Telegram Widget-19788embed=1.mp4
[download] 100% of 1.25MiB in 00:00
[download] Finished downloading playlist: Telegram Widgetmp4 link that can played by mpv

[mayeaux]

@aatv I LOVE YOU THANK YOU OMG

[bertsky]

Another use-case: if t.me says Media is too big (for the browser) and only offers view in telegram.

The ?embed=1 suffix method does not work in my case.

[mayeaux]

Another use-case: if t.me says Media is too big (for the browser) and only offers view in telegram.

The ?embed=1 suffix method does not work in my case.

I just ran into that too. RIP.