Setting up reminders¶

Sometimes you will want to send notifications to yourself, such as reminders or logs.

You basically don't get a notification when your TGPy code sends a message to any chat, pretty like you don't get a notification when you send a message from another device.

There are a few workarounds.

Method 1. Scheduling messages¶

Telegram has a built-in feature for scheduling messages. You can try it by opening the app and long-tapping (or right clicking) the «Send» button.

Luckily, Telegram notifies you whenever any of your scheduled messages was sent.

That means your TGPy script can postpone a message by a minute rather then send it, and you will get a notification on your devices.

Saved Messages suit well for scheduling reminders. You can also create a private group or channel to have such notifications there.

The realization is as easy as adding the schedule argument to client.send_message() or msg.respond(). For example, this is how to schedule a message to Saved Messages:

import datetime as dt

next_minute = dt.datetime.utcnow() + dt.timedelta(minutes=1)
await client.send_message('me', 'Hey there!', schedule=next_minute)

Method 2. Using a bot¶

Direct messages from a bot are the natural way to have notifications.

It's super-easy to control a bot from TGPy, as Telethon methods can be used for bots as well as user accounts.

Firstly, you should create a bot with BotFather. Then log in using the bot token and API key that you are already using:

from telethon import TelegramClient
bot = TelegramClient('bot', client.API_ID, client.API_KEY)
await bot.start('your_token')

As a user, you should start the dialog so that the bot will be able to send you messages.

The bot can talk now.

await bot.send_message(msg.sender_id, 'Hello world')
return

Just like this, you can use bot with familiar client methods to edit and pin messages, for example.

Bonus method. Marking chats as unread¶

Putting «Unread» mark on a chat without notification may also be helpful.

I used to have TGPy auto-reposting memes from other social media to my channel. My TGPy module sent a message and then marked the chat as unread so I would notice the new messages later.

To mark a chat as uread, you should use the special API method:

from telethon import functions

await client(functions.messages.MarkDialogUnreadRequest(peer='Example Chat', unread=True))

As usual, peer here can be anything tha Telethon can convert to a peer: the title, the username, the id, a chat object and so on.