Customize your Telegram bot’s /start message and force a channel join

Open your bot’s admin panel and tap Tasks

Everything about the /start lives in the panel of that bot. Open it from My Bots and tap Tasks: it is a folder, not a single app.

Open /start Tasks

The folder holds Tasks, Channels and /start Tasks. /start Tasks is the one that designs the message new users get. It is in every template, including chat bots.

Write the message

The Message tab opens on your bot’s current text, so you start from something that works. Edit it in the box; the chat above shows the result as Telegram will. {channels} becomes the list of requirements and {name} the user’s first name. The toolbar adds bold, italic, underline, strike, code, spoiler and links; ✨ inserts a premium emoji.

If the text would be rejected by Telegram — an unclosed tag, a lone “<” — a red line under the box says why, and Save waits until it is fixed.

Tap ✨ to add a premium emoji

Put the cursor in the box where you want the emoji and tap ✨, the last button of the toolbar. You do not type it: your premium emoji library opens, because a premium emoji is a Telegram ID and only Telegram can give it to you.

Send the emoji to your bot and tap it

Premium emojis opens. The first time it is empty: tap Open @GoldRushBot, and in the chat with your bot send the premium emoji from the account you manage the bot with (sending one needs Telegram Premium on that account). Go back to the panel without closing the library: it is Live, and the emoji shows up a second later with its ID under it. Tap it. If you already have the ID, paste it below and press Use.

Send it from the account that manages the bot. Whatever anyone else sends your bot never reaches your library.

The emoji lands in the text

The library closes and the emoji goes where the cursor was, as a tg-emoji tag with its ID: that is the form Telegram asks for. The chat above already shows it in place. Use as many as you like in the message. If Telegram does not accept premium emojis from your bot, the /start still arrives with the regular emoji inside the tag, and Test tells you so.

Add a photo, GIF or video (optional)

Under the box, 📎 Add a photo, GIF or video opens the library in media mode: only photos, GIFs and videos, no stickers. It fills the same way as the sticker one: send them to @GoldRushBot from your admin account, or upload them with ⬆ Upload GIF / image. Each one carries its type at the bottom — IMG, GIF, VIDEO. Tap the one you want.

The media goes on top, with your text as its caption

The message goes out as in Telegram: the photo, GIF or video on top and your text under it, in the same message. The row below shows it as a thumbnail, with Change to pick another and ✕ to remove it. Telegram cuts a caption at 1,024 characters: if your text is longer, the media goes in its own message right above, and the panel tells you.

Let it type itself (optional)

Turn on Live typing and the message appears as if it were being written live, with Telegram’s streaming, before it settles with its formatting and buttons. Watch replays it in the preview. Where Telegram does not support it, the message simply arrives at once.

Go to Buttons and add one

On the Buttons tab the keyboard in the chat becomes editable. The dashed key at the end, + Add a button, opens the assistant. Adding a requirement and adding its button is the same action.

Choose what it opens

The assistant keeps the button itself fixed at the top, with three progress bars under it. Step 1 asks what it opens. Channel, Group, Bot, Mini App and Website are requirements; Link is optional and never blocks anyone. Tapping one moves you to the next step.

Say where it goes

Step 2 is one field. For a channel or a group, type its @username or ID; for a bot, paste its link — your own referral link works; for a website, its address. Next stays disabled until the field has something in it, and Enter moves on.

Make your bot an administrator of the channel or group first. If it is not, the button is refused and the assistant tells you why.

Give it text and a color

Step 3 is how it looks. Leave the text empty and every user gets an automatic label in their own language, or write your own. The four circles are the colors Telegram allows. The button at the top shows the result as you go. The ✨ to the left of the text is for its premium emoji: the next step.

Give the button a premium emoji

Tap that ✨ and the same Premium emojis library as in the message opens: the ones you already sent @GoldRushBot are there, and a new one is added the same way, with Open @GoldRushBot. Tap one and the library closes: the emoji appears in front of the text on the button at the top, and an ✕ next to the text removes it. Telegram allows ONE premium emoji per button. + Add places the button just above Verify.

Arrange the keyboard

Every key has a grip and a color dot, like the menu editor of referral bots. Drag a key by its grip to move it: drop it between two keys to put them in one row, or between rows to give it its own. Tap a key to edit its text, emoji or where it goes; tap its dot to recolor it. ↶ and ↷ at the top undo and redo any change.

Verify can be moved and restyled, but not removed: without it nobody could get in.

Understand the AD slot on free bots

On a free bot the first key is the builder’s sponsored slot, marked AD. You can drag it and color it like any other key. Tapping it or its ✕ explains what it is and what removes it: the one-time lifetime payment, $69 for a Mini App, which also removes every Mini Empire ad and watermark.

On Stickers, tap ＋ on a step

The Stickers tab is the /start in the order the user lives it: before the message, your message, after the message, and when they get in (after verifying). Every empty step has its own ＋ Add a sticker or GIF: tap the one of the step where you want it.

Send a sticker or GIF to your bot

Stickers & GIFs, your library, opens. The first time it is empty: tap Open @GoldRushBot and, in the chat with your bot, send it the sticker or GIF from the account you manage it with. For a sticker the bot answers “✅ Saved to your /start Tasks library (admin panel).” Go back to the panel: the library is Live and shows it a second later, no reload. Is the GIF on your phone rather than in Telegram? ⬆ Upload GIF / image uploads it from the device.

Only what an admin of the bot sends counts. Whatever your users send never reaches the library.

Tap it to add it

Everything you send stays in the library with its type at the bottom — GIF, STK for a sticker, IMG for an image — and works for any step, today and next time. Tap one: it goes into the step whose ＋ you tapped and the library closes. Before and after take 3; when they get in, 2. The ✕ on a thumbnail deletes it from the library, not from the /start.

Set the waits and the deletions

Once a step has stickers, its settings appear as pills under it. Tap one and pick from its menu: how long to wait before the message (Auto is the GIF’s length), whether it is deleted before the message starts, when the ones after appear and when they disappear. The ＋ next to the thumbnails adds another from the library.

Open the Welcome tab

The fourth tab designs the message that arrives after the gate, or straight away for someone already in or arriving at a bot with no requirements. It has its own chat: it opens on your usual welcome and its key that opens the app. Until you touch anything, your bot keeps sending that one, in each user’s language. The open key drags and recolors like the ones on Buttons, but it cannot be removed.

Add link buttons

The Welcome’s ＋ Link button only adds links — there is nothing to require here — so the assistant opens straight on the destination: a @channel, a t.me link or a website. On the next step you give it text, color and its premium emoji, as on the gate, and it lands above the open key.

Give it media and, if you like, live typing

Everything from the gate message works here: the formatting bar, ✨ for premium emojis, {name}, 📎 for a photo, GIF or video with the text as its caption, and Live typing. ↺ Default text goes back to your usual welcome. The Welcome tab gets its ✓ as soon as you customize it.

On a chat bot: the menu goes in a message of its own

A Telegram message holds one keyboard, and a chat bot’s is its menu. With no link buttons, the menu goes on the Welcome itself. As soon as you add one, the menu travels in a short message of its own and the Welcome keeps its inline buttons and media. The chat shows it like this: the menu message in its place and your Menu Builder menu at the bottom, as in Telegram.

Pick the menu message’s text and order

Further down the tab, Menu message appears. Type its text or tap one of the shortcuts — /start, 👇, ⌨️ Menu —; your bot’s %variables% work. Before the Welcome or After the Welcome sets the order, and the chat above moves it at once. With no link buttons this block is not there: the menu goes on the Welcome itself.

Test it in your own chat

Test sends what you are editing to your chat with the bot, not to your users and not to the other admins: from Message, Buttons or Stickers, the exact gate with its waits, live typing and stickers; from Welcome, the Welcome. When it finishes, a report lists what Telegram created with each sticker and GIF. A GIF must come back as an Animated GIF; anything else is marked in red.

Save and activate

Until you save, your bot keeps its classic /start and nothing changes for users. Save and activate turns your design on for the next person who sends /start. After that the button reads Saved until you change something again. The switch at the top turns the design off at any time, back to the classic /start.