Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

Awesome Lists | Featured Topics | Projects

https://github.com/finesse/telegramdeletions

A CLI script to save messages deleted from a Telegram chat
https://github.com/finesse/telegramdeletions

cli recovery service surveillance telegram

Last synced: about 2 months ago
JSON representation

A CLI script to save messages deleted from a Telegram chat

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

        
# Telegram Deletions



A simple CLI application to save messages deleted in specific Telegram chats.



How it works:

1. The app signs-in to Telegram behalf your account

2. The app watches all incoming messages in selected dialogs and saves them to disk

3. When a saved message is deleted, the app posts the message to another chat



The script can't restore messages posted or deleted when it didn't run.

So you should always keep it running, ideally on a server.



## Installation



Requirements:

- Python version 3.10 or newer

- A Telegram account

- Git (optional)



Download the code and install the dependencies:



```bash

git clone --depth 1 [email protected]:Finesse/WordleSolver.git telegram_deletions

cd telegram_deletions

python3 -m venv .venv

source ./.venv/bin/activate

python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip

python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

cp .env.example .env

```



Get a Telegram application credentials from https://my.telegram.org, under API Development.

Or from https://tjhorner.dev/webogram/#/login.



Configure the app by editing the `.env` file (or provide the environment variable any other way):



- `TELEGRAM_APP_ID` — the application id

- `TELEGRAM_APP_HASH` — the application hash

- `APP_DATA_DIRECTORY` (optional) — path to the directory to store data (cookie, messages) at.

  The running application must have permissions to read and write in the directory.

  The default is `data`.

- Ignore the chat options for now



List your dialogs to see their ids by running:



```bash

python3 src/list_dialogs.py

```



When you run it the first time, it will ask your credentials to sign in.



Configure `.env` again:



- `APP_CHATS_TO_WATCH` — id of the chat(s) to watch (integer).

    If multiple, must be separated by `,`.

    You can find them after `Chat id:` in the dialog list.

- `APP_CHAT_TO_OUTPUT` — input entity of the chat to post deleted messages (a Python function call string).

    Copy the part after `Input entity:` in the dialog list.



## Usage



Run the app:



```bash

python3 src/watch_deletions.py

```



Keep it running. Press Ctrl+C to stop watching.



> [!WARNING]  

> The app never deletes messages from the data directory.

> You should remove them manually; it's ok to delete any message when the app is running. 



## Running as daemon



This section tells how to configure the app as a Linux service so that the app always runs.



Connect to the server via SSH as a regular user.

It must have a sudo access to execute one command.

Install and configure the app following the above steps.

Make sure you've called `python3 src/list_dialogs.py` on the server,

otherwise the service will stuck on the Telegram sign-in dialog.



> [!IMPORTANT]  

> The following steps assume the app directory is `~/telegram_deletions`.

> If it's false in your case, adjust the commands accordingly.



Run on the server:



```bash

sudo loginctl enable-linger "$USER"



mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user

ln -s ~/telegram_deletions/telegram_deletions.service ~/.config/systemd/user/telegram_deletions.service

systemctl --user daemon-reload

systemctl --user enable telegram_deletions

systemctl --user start telegram_deletions

```



Check the logs to make sure it works:



```bash

journalctl --user -u telegram_deletions

```



If you want to stop and unregister the service:



```bash

systemctl --user stop telegram_deletions

systemctl --user disable telegram_deletions

```