About the Platform

Telegram Mini Apps is a technology created by the developers of the famous messenger Telegram. Its main purpose is to provide developers with a more flexible communication channel with Telegram users.

It may seem unclear, but Mini Apps are not self-served services. The first thing to note is, technically, this technology is just an add-on for such already-known Telegram functionality as Telegram Bots. So, currently, creating a Mini App without creating a Telegram Bot is not possible.

The platform offers a high variety of available methods to communicate with the Telegram application to make your web applications look more native, allow them to simulate native application's behavior, and, finally, to mimic native applications.

Required Technologies

Before starting to create an application on the Mini Apps platform, it is important to know what Mini Apps are from their technical side. This will lead the developer to language and technology selection.

Internally, Mini Apps are typical web applications, which are displayed in WebView. In other words, they are just a set of static files (mostly .js, .css, and .html). So, to create Mini App, it is enough to learn standard front-end development technologies, such as:

• JavaScript
• CSS
• HTML

Really simple, isn't it? But to make much more serious and bigger applications, we recommend using more solid technologies, such as TypeScript, React, SCSS, etc.

So, if we want to create a Mini App, we should create a standard web application with any technology stack. The only thing Telegram needs from the developer is the application URL. This URL will be used as a source for the WebView component of the Telegram client, which will load and display the application within Telegram.

Usage

As we mentioned in the previous section, Mini Apps are add-ons for Telegram Bots. Telegram Bots are also a well-known technology that provides functionality for a wide range of use cases. You could create a bot to buy a ticket in the cinema, make tell users jokes, generate random numbers, etc. In other words, the bot can do whatever the developer thinks of.

The problem is, the visual part of bots is not as good and functional as it could be. Their current implementation is "console-like" which is more appropriate for developers, not common users. That's when Mini Apps come.

Using Mini Apps, developers are allowed to create more user-friendly and complex interfaces, which are commonly used by typical users. With this technology, the developer is still able to communicate with the bot behind Mini App, but, additionally, they can provide some more flexible interfaces to interact with.

Mini Apps are usually used when a standard bot interface is not enough. Create a Mini App when you want to make user life easier when displaying several buttons is not even close to the functionality, you want to provide.

Supported Applications

Currently, Telegram Mini Apps are available on a wide list of Telegram applications:

• Telegram for Android android;
• Telegram for iOS ios;
• Telegram for macOS macos;
• Telegram Desktop tdesktop;
• Telegram Web A weba;
• Telegram Web K web;

Other applications either don't have implementation for Telegram Mini Apps, or support it too poorly. This will probably be useful in the next sections of the documentation.

INFO

As long as all applications are being developed separately, there may be variations in how they implement the platform. If you encounter unexpected differences, please consider reporting an issue.