TelegramBuddy is a Telegram video downloader for macOS and Windows that saves every video from a channel, group or chat into a folder on your computer in one pass. You choose the chat, filter to videos, and the app works through the full history on its own — resuming large files if anything interrupts it. It signs in to your own Telegram account, so it can reach every chat you can already open.
What it does
Saving videos one at a time in the Telegram app is fine for a handful and hopeless for a few hundred. TelegramBuddy turns “all the videos in this channel” into a single decision. It scans the chat from the first message to the latest, picks out every video that matches your filters, and adds them to a download queue. You can watch the queue, pause it, or leave it running while you do something else.
It handles more than video, too. The same bulk download can take photos, documents, music files and voice messages, or any combination, so you can bulk download Telegram media of every kind from one place.
Who uses it
- People archiving a channel they follow. Lecture recordings, a club’s match footage, a creator’s back catalogue you have access to — kept in a folder you control.
- Teams with a working channel. Product demos, site footage or training clips posted over months, gathered in one go for editing or backup.
- Families and friends. The group chat where every birthday and holiday video lives, saved before a phone is replaced.
How to download videos from a Telegram channel
- Install TelegramBuddy from the download page and open it.
- Add your api_id and api_hash. You get these from my.telegram.org in about two minutes, once. The guide to getting your api_id and api_hash walks through the form.
- Sign in to your own Telegram account by scanning a QR code or with your phone number. The session is kept in a file on your computer.
- Open the chat. Pick it from your list, or paste an @username, a
t.meinvite link, a privatet.me/c/message link or a numeric id. - Switch to Gallery view and filter to Videos. You now see a thumbnail grid of nothing but video. Narrow it further with a caption or file-name search, or a date range, if you only want part of the archive.
- Start a bulk download. Choose the destination folder and how many files may download at the same time, then let the queue run. You can select several chats and queue them all together.
There is a longer walkthrough in how to download all videos from a Telegram channel.
Details that matter
The whole history, not just what is on screen. Chat and Gallery views load older messages as you scroll, so selecting what is visible only covers what has loaded. Bulk download scans the entire chat itself, so you never have to scroll back four years to reach the first post.
Resumable large files. Big videos keep their partial data as they arrive. Pause the queue, lose your connection or close the app, and the file continues from where it stopped next time. The guide to resuming interrupted downloads explains how.
Rate limits handled for you. When Telegram asks an app to slow down (a flood wait), TelegramBuddy waits out the interval and carries on by itself rather than failing the queue.
Organised output. Each chat gets its own folder, optionally split into Photos, Videos, Files, Music and Voice. Files keep Telegram’s original names, and each file’s date is set to the date of the message, so sorting by date gives you the channel’s timeline back. The download folder is yours to choose. On a Mac, see saving Telegram videos on a Mac for platform notes.
Private channels. If you are a member of a private channel or group, you can open it by invite link, message link or id and download from it like any other chat. The private Telegram channel downloader page covers that in detail.
Protected chats. Some owners switch on “Restrict saving content”. That switch means the owner does not want the material to leave the chat; if you need a copy, ask them. Only save videos you have the right to keep.
How it compares
| TelegramBuddy | Forwarding or cloud bots | Saving by hand in Telegram | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where files go | Straight to your disk | Through a third party first | Your device, one at a time |
| Whole channel history | Yes, scanned automatically | Usually per message | Only as far as you scroll |
| Interrupted large files | Continue where they stopped | Varies | Often start again |
| Private chats | Any chat your account can open | Only what you forward to the bot | Yes |
| Re-runs | Skip files you already have | Varies | You keep track yourself |
Telegram’s own desktop export can also save media, but it is built for one-off exports of a whole chat rather than a filtered, repeatable video queue. If you want the conversation itself as a readable file, the Telegram chat export page covers that.
Privacy by design
There is no TelegramBuddy server between you and Telegram. The app talks to Telegram directly from your computer and writes files straight to disk; your files are not uploaded anywhere. It is not a bot, so nothing is forwarded anywhere, and it sees exactly the chats your account can see. The interface is available in English, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian and Uzbek, and follows your system language.
Get started
Install the app, add your api_id, sign in, and point it at the channel whose videos you want. The download button at the top of this page gets you the current build for macOS or Windows.