How to Develop, Debug, and Launch Telegram Apps

Telegram is a popular messaging app with more than 950 million monthly active users (as of July 2024). The platform also provides a range of features from automatic replies and daily news summaries to tools for monitoring investments and language translation.

And yet its capabilities go well beyond these functionalities.

Leveraging the TON blockchain which is renowned for its high speed and scalability, developers can now create decentralized applications known as Telegram Mini Apps. These offer businesses numerous advantages, including access to a large user base, diverse monetization options, and multi-platform compatibility.

If you are interested in developing Telegram apps, we recommend checking out our comprehensive guide. It covers everything from building and debugging your app to launching it successfully and offers the technical insights you need to secure its success.

How to develop Telegram apps? A step-by-step guide

Before diving into the five major steps for developing Telegram apps, it is important to mention a couple of vital aspects:

1. Developers can use JavaScript to create flexible and integrated interfaces within Telegram apps.
2. Telegram apps comprise Telegram bots and Telegram Mini Apps. Bots are suitable for executing straightforward tasks like client support while Mini Apps are designed for more complex functionalities.

And now, without further ado, let’s explore how to build Telegram apps.

1. Analyze Telegram’s capabilities and review developer resources

Before beginning development, you will need to thoroughly analyze Telegram’s features, capabilities, and limitations.

You may well explore Telegram’s comprehensive documentation for valuable insights into creating Mini Apps and a lot of other technical details.

Plus, review available SDKs like tma.js/sdk — a TypeScript library that streamlines interaction with Telegram Mini Apps by breaking the process into manageable components.

2. Create the design for your Telegram app

Next comes the design stage. During this step, you will need to design your Mini App’s interface and user experience and align them with Telegram’s design principles.

These include:

1. Mobile-first and responsive design. Make sure that all elements adapt seamlessly to mobile devices.
2. Consistency with Telegram UI. Match the style and behavior of Telegram’s existing UI components.
3. Smooth animations. Aim for fluid animations at 60 frames per second.
4. Accessibility for all. Label all inputs and images for users relying on assistive technologies.
5. Dynamic color adaptation. Establish visual consistency by adapting to theme-based colors from the API.

3. Develop your Telegram app

The development of Telegram apps comprises the following steps:

Create a Telegram Bot

• Use BotFather. Search for BotFather in Telegram, start a conversation, and use the /newbot command to create a new bot.
• Get an access token. BotFather provides an access token for authenticating interactions with the Telegram API.

For more details on setting up the bot, refer to this resource.

Set up your development environment

Choose an integrated development environment (IDE) that supports your preferred languages and frameworks as well as a framework or library that simplifies the handling of Telegram API interactions.

You can use language-specific libraries such as Telegraf for Node.js, Java API, or python-telegram-bot for handling Telegram API interactions. A complete list of libraries is available here.

Start coding

• Integrate smart contracts. If your Mini App involves transactions or decentralized features, use the FunC language for smart contracts on TON and integrate them with your Mini App.
• Develop the web frontend. For Mini Apps needing a complex UI or extra features beyond basic bots, you should develop a web frontend using React, JavaScript, CSS, and other technologies.

Once you have completed these steps, the next crucial phase is testing and debugging your Telegram Mini Apps.

Let’s examine this essential process in detail and dive into the technical aspects.

Access test environment

To test and debug your Telegram Mini Apps, you need to access Telegram’s test environment.

Here’s how to log in on various operating systems:

1. iOS

• Tap 10 times on the Settings icon
• Navigate to Accounts > Login to another account > Test

2. Telegram Desktop

• Open the Settings menu
• Click on Shift + Alt and right-click on ‘Add Account’
• Select ‘Test Server’ from the options

3. macOS

• Click the Settings icon 10 times to open the Debug Menu
• Use ⌘ (Command) + click on ‘Add Account’
• Log in using your phone number

Set up the test environment

The test environment is distinct from the main Telegram environment. To use it, you will need to create a new user account and a bot through BotFather, which is Telegram’s bot for building and managing bots.

Here’s a brief reminder on how to do this:

• Open Telegram and search for @BotFather
• Start a chat with @BotFather using the /newbot command
• Follow the instructions to set a name and username for your bot
• @BotFather will provide you with a token for your new bot
• With your bot token, you can send requests to the Bot API using the following format: https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/test/METHOD_NAME
• Replace <token> with your bot’s token and METHOD_NAME with the desired API method

Note! In the test environment, you can use HTTP links without TLS to test your Telegram Mini App.

Debug mode across different platforms

Below are detailed instructions for debugging Telegram Mini Apps on various operating systems.

Android

1. Enable USB debugging

• Navigate to your device’s Settings > System > Developer Options and enable USB Debugging

2. Activate WebView Debugging in Telegram

• Open Telegram and go to Settings
• Scroll down, tap the version number twice, and hold on the second tap
• Select ‘Enable WebView Debug’ from the Debug Settings

3. Connect your phone to your computer

• Connect your phone to your computer via USB
• Open Chrome on your computer and go to chrome://inspect/#devices
• Launch your Mini App on your phone; it should appear in the list for inspection

Telegram Desktop on Windows and Linux

1. Download Beta Version

• Make sure you have the Beta Version of Telegram Desktop installed on Windows or Linux (Note: macOS is not supported)

2. Enable WebView inspection

• Open Telegram Desktop and go to Settings > Advanced > Experimental Settings
• Enable WebView inspection
• Right-click within the WebView of your Mini App and select ‘Inspect’

Telegram macOS

1. Download Beta Version

• Download and install the Beta Version of Telegram for macOS

2. Enable Debug mode

• Quickly click the Settings icon 5 times to open the debug menu
• Enable Debug Mini Apps
• Right-click within your Mini App and choose Inspect Element

Testing with Eruda

Eruda is a lightweight JavaScript library that provides debugging tools for mobile web environments. Integrating it into your Mini App helps identify and fix issues on Telegram.

Testing your Telegram Mini App with Eruda involves these three steps:

1. Deploy Eruda Library

Start by adding the Eruda library to your HTML file. The recommended approach is to use a CDN:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/eruda"></script>

Alternatively, you can install Eruda using npm or other package managers:

npm install eruda --save

yarn add eruda

pnpm add eruda

2. Initialize Eruda

Initialize Eruda once the web page loads. If using a CDN, you can start it with the following script:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/eruda"></script>

<script>

// Initialize Eruda

eruda.init();

</script>

For modern tooling and package management, add this script to your project:

import eruda from ‘eruda’

eruda.init()

3. Launch Eruda

Deploy and launch your Mini App, then click the Eruda icon to start debugging.

Eruda will enable you to inspect elements, view logs, and monitor network requests.

For more details, check out these sources:

• https://core.telegram.org/api
• https://docs.telegram-mini-apps.com/packages/tma-js-sdk
• https://docs.ton.org/develop/dapps/telegram-apps/

5. Launch your Telegram app

Once you have developed and thoroughly tested your Telegram app, you can finally get down to its launch.

The Telegram Apps Center is your go-to spot for accessing Telegram’s massive audience. Plus, you can reach new audiences by promoting your Mini App through Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) and within Telegram communities.

How to launch a Telegram Mini App?

To date, Telegram offers six different ways to launch Mini Apps and each one suits various user behaviors and scenarios.

1. Keyboard button. Launch Mini Apps from a web_app type keyboard button, which allows data to be sent back to the bot as a service message via Telegram.WebApp.sendData. This lets the bot generate responses directly without needing external server interactions.

2. Inline button. Use a web_app type Inline KeyboardButton to collect basic user data and send messages on behalf of the user to chat with the bot.

3. Menu button. Customize a menu button to quickly access the Mini App that functions similarly to an inline button.

4. Inline mode. Deploy Mini Apps via a web_app type InlineQueryResultsButton to use in any chat through inline mode. This helps users create content in a web interface and send it directly to the current chat.

5. Direct link. Launch a Mini App using a direct link within any current chat.

6. Attachment menu. Configure Mini App Bots to appear in a user’s attachment menu for quick and convenient access from any chat.

Closing thoughts

Developing Telegram apps presents vast opportunities for business growth, community engagement, and technological innovation.

If you are ready to create and launch your own Telegram apps, you can always count on PixelPlex for assistance.

As an official tech partner of the TON Foundation, our Telegram Mini App development team possesses the expertise to engineer high-performance solutions on the TON blockchain.

With advanced proficiency in FunC and Tact programming languages, we deliver precise and high-quality applications that maximize the capabilities of Telegram’s platform for your business.

Feel free to reach out and let’s create top-notch Telegram apps together.