Telegram


The telegram platform uses Telegram to deliver notifications from Home Assistant to your Android device, your Windows phone, or your iOS device.

The requirements are:

  • You need a Telegram bot. Please follow those instructions to create one and get the token for your bot. Keep in mind that bots are not allowed to contact users. You need to make the first contact with your user. Meaning that you need to send a message to the bot from your user.
  • You need to configure a Telegram bot in Home Assistant and define there your API key and the allowed chat ids to interact with.
  • The chat_id of an allowed user.

To retrieve your chat_id, contact any of the Telegram bots created for this purpose (@myidbot, @get_id_bot)

The quickest way to retrieve your chat_id is visiting https://api.telegram.org/botYOUR_API_TOKEN/getUpdates or to use $ curl -X GET https://api.telegram.org/botYOUR_API_TOKEN/getUpdates. Replace YOUR_API_TOKEN with your actual token.

The result set will include your chat ID as id in the from section:

{"ok":true,"result":[{"update_id":254199982,
"message":{"message_id":27,"from":{"id":123456789,"first_name":"YOUR_FIRST_NAME YOUR_NICK_NAME","last_name":"YOUR_LAST_NAME","username":"YOUR_NICK_NAME"},"chat":{"id":123456789,"first_name":"YOUR_FIRST_NAME YOUR_NICK_NAME","last_name":"YOUR_LAST_NAME","username":"YOUR_NICK_NAME","type":"private"},"date":1678292650,"text":"test"}}]}

Another way to get your chat ID directly is described below. Start your Python interpreter from the command-line:

$ python3
>>> import telegram
>>> bot = telegram.Bot(token='YOUR_API_TOKEN')
>>> chat_id = bot.getUpdates()[-1].message.chat_id
>>> print(chat_id)
123456789

To enable Telegram notifications in your installation, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry for the Telegram Bot
telegram_bot:
  - platform: polling
    api_key: ABCDEFGHJKLMNOPQRSTUVXYZ
    allowed_chat_ids:
      - CHAT_ID_1
      - CHAT_ID_2
      - CHAT_ID_3

# Example configuration.yaml entry for the notifier
notify:
  - name: NOTIFIER_NAME
    platform: telegram
    chat_id: CHAT_ID_2

Configuration variables:

  • name (Optional): Setting the optional parameter name allows multiple notifiers to be created. The default value is notify. The notifier will bind to the service notify.NOTIFIER_NAME.
  • chat_id (Required): The chat ID of your user.

To use notifications, please see the getting started with automation page.

Text message

...
action:
  service: notify.NOTIFIER_NAME
  data:
    title: '*Send a message*'
    message: 'That's an example that _sends_ a *formatted* message with a custom inline keyboard.'
    data:
      inline_keyboard:
        - 'Task 1:/command1, Task 2:/command2'
        - 'Task 3:/command3, Task 4:/command4'

Configuration variables:

  • message (Required): Message text.
  • title (Optional): Will be composed as ‘%title\n%message’.
  • keyboard (Optional): List of rows of commands, comma-separated, to make a custom keyboard.
  • inline_keyboard (Optional): List of rows of commands, comma-separated, to make a custom inline keyboard with buttons with associated callback data.

Photo support

...
action:
  service: notify.NOTIFIER_NAME
  data:
    title: Send an images
    message: That's an example that sends an image.
    data:
      photo:
        - url: http://192.168.1.28/camera.jpg
          username: admin
          password: secrete
        - file: /tmp/picture.jpg
          caption: Picture Title xy
        - url: http://somebla.ie/video.png
          caption: I.e. for a Title

Configuration variables:

  • url or file (Required): For local or remote path to an image.
  • caption (Optional): The title of the image.
  • username (Optional): Username for a URL which require HTTP authentication.
  • password (Optional): Username for a URL which require HTTP authentication.
  • authentication (Optional): Set to ‘digest’ to use HTTP digest authentication, defaults to ‘basic’.
  • keyboard (Optional): List of rows of commands, comma-separated, to make a custom keyboard.
  • inline_keyboard (Optional): List of rows of commands, comma-separated, to make a custom inline keyboard with buttons with associated callback data.

Since Homeassistant version 0.48 you have to whitelist the source folder of the file you want to include in the notification. yaml configuration.yaml ... homeassistant: whitelist_external_dirs: - /tmp - /home/kenji/data

Document support

...
action:
  service: notify.NOTIFIER_NAME
  data:
    title: Send a document
    message: That's an example that sends a document and a custom keyboard.
    data:
      document:
        file: /tmp/whatever.odf
        caption: Document Title xy
    keyboard:
      - '/command1, /command2'
      - '/command3, /command4'

Configuration variables:

  • url or file (Required): For local or remote path to a document.
  • caption (Optional): The title of the document.
  • username (Optional): Username for a URL which require HTTP authentication.
  • password (Optional): Username for a URL which require HTTP authentication.
  • authentication (Optional): Set to ‘digest’ to use HTTP digest authentication, defaults to ‘basic’.
  • keyboard (Optional): List of rows of commands, comma-separated, to make a custom keyboard.
  • inline_keyboard (Optional): List of rows of commands, comma-separated, to make a custom inline keyboard with buttons with associated callback data.

Location support

...

action:
  service: notify.NOTIFIER_NAME
  data:
    title: Send location
    message: Location updated.
    data:
      location:
        latitude: 32.87336
        longitude: 117.22743

Configuration variables:

  • latitude (Required): The latitude to send.
  • longitude (Required): The longitude to send.
  • keyboard (Optional): List of rows of commands, comma-separated, to make a custom keyboard.
  • inline_keyboard (Optional): List of rows of commands, comma-separated, to make a custom inline keyboard with buttons with associated callback data.