Extensive Text Formatting in Telegram Messages ​

Bot API allows specifying message markup in HTML or Markdown. Telegram API libraries like Telethon and Pyrogram usually support similar syntax.

Message text may include various markup:

• Bold text
• Italic text
• Underlined text
• Strikethrough text
• Monospaced text
• Links
• Spoilers, which mean hidden text
• User mentions through their ID
• Custom emoji (which are available only for bots with paid usernames)

A message may contain no more than 100 such markup elements (more will be ignored.)

In addition, a message may contain any number of username mentions.

Monospaced text ​

Monospaced can be a piece of text (similar to <code> in HTML) or a block (similar to <pre>).

When sending a monospaced text block, you can specify code language so that Telegram apps will apply syntax highlighting.

Spoiler ​

A spoiler is some text hidden behind an animated cover.

Pictures can be hidden with a spoiler as well, though this is not related to message markup.

User mentions ​

A mention is clickable text which leads to a user profile. To insert a mention using Bot API, one can embed a link of form tg://user?ID=123456789. A username of a user turns into a mention automatically.

When a group member gets mentioned, they get a notification. However, if a message contains more than five mentions, only five users will get such notifications.

Bot may mention a user through ID only if they participate in the current chat or have turned on linking them while forwarding their messages. In addition, a bot must have seen the user.

Username mentions are technically regular text. When a user clicks on a username mention, Telegram app fetches info about the username owner. On contrary, when sending ID mentions, the sender specifies the mentioned user ID which becomes a part of the message. Recipients get the user profile together with the message, so the mention will be clickable even if the user changes its username.

Related links ​

• Bot API docs on markup