Table of Contents

• TG-Focus💡
• Overview
• Quickstart
• TGFCMD Examples
• Filters Rules
• Development
• Contributing
• Can I trust tg-focus?
• Is tg-focus a crawler?
• License

TG-Focus💡

Overview

tg-focus is a comprehensive Telegram message filter that helps you focus. A gentle user bot for message forwarding. Most of message types are supported: public/private chats, channel updates, and more.

By customizing focus filters, tg-focus can forward any specific message from any chat to a dedicated chat, TG-FOCUS, that way you have full control of the messages you see.

tg-focus is built on top of TDLib, and speaks the same language as TDLib speaks, in which way tg-focus is just inherently as consistent, reliable and stable as TDLib itself for most Telegram-specific functionalities.

The supported platforms are:

OS \ ARCH	x86 64	aarch64
Linux	✅	✅
Windows	🔨	🔨
BSD	🔨	🔨
macOS	🔨	🔨

Supported(✅). Work In Progress(🔨).

Quickstart

The following 7 steps will help you start up tg-focus and filter some specific messages.

1. Download the binaries at GitHub releases page.

2. Extract the files:

   # linux 
   tar xf tg-focus-3.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
   cd tg-focus-3.0-linux-x86_64
   

3. Log in your Telegram account firstly, it needs your phone number and a login code. Phone number should be typed in international format, e.g., +1 23 4567 if your phone number is 23 4567 with region code +1.

   ./tgfocus auth
   
   # enter your phone and login code...
   

   If everthing works fine, you should see:

   Logged in successfullly!
   

4. Start up tg-focus daemon:

   ./tgfocus quickstart
   

   If everthing works fine, you should see:

   startup: done
   focus-start: done
   

5. Go back to your Telgram application, open the TG-FOCUS chat.

   (NOTE) since the default filter does not filter any messages, you might see many continuously incoming messages.

6. Configure the focus filters. Suppose you only want to see the messages where the word "freedom" is mentioned, you add it to the keyword list by sending this message to the TG-FOCUS chat:

   TGFCMD editf 1 keywords add "freedom"
   

   (NOTE) don't forget two double quotes.

   If everthing works fine, you should see:

   [ TGFCMD ] success
   

   You can also check your focus filters by sending this message:

   TGFCMD filters
   

7. Then wait patiently at TG-FOCUS, and enjoy your every freedom-related conversion :-)

TGFCMD Examples

Note that all of command mentioned in this section are to be sent out at TG-FOCUS chat

To forward the messages that belong to the chat "Freedom User Group":

TGFCMD editf 1 titles add "Freedom User Group"

To forward the messages that sent by the user "Some One":

TGFCMD editf 1 senders add "Some One"

To forward the messages that contain a word "freedom":

TGFCMD editf 1 keywords add "freedom"  

To forward two types of messages, the first contains a word "free things" and belongs to the chat "Nonfree Lovers", the second contains a word "nonfree things" and belongs to "Free Lovers":

TGFCMD editf 1 titles add "Nonfree Lovers"
TGFCMD editf 1 keywords add "free things"
TGFCMD editf 2 titles add "Free Lovers"
TGFCMD editf 2 keywords add "nonfree things"

Not to forward the messages that sent by the user "Nonfree Lover":

TGFCMD editf 1 no-senders add "Nonfree Lover"

Check current filters configuration:

TGFCMD filters

Pause forwarding:

TGFCMD pause

Resume forwarding:

TGFCMD resume

Filters Rules

Filters configurationa is composed of many Focus Filters. A Focus Filter is a filter to match against the message's chat/sender/content. They have several rules(or properties):

• titles
• keywords
• senders
• no-titles
• no-senders
• no-keywords

Simply put, titles, keywords, senders are the lists of chat titles, keywords, senders that you are interested in respectively. no-titles, no-keywords, no-senders are the ones you don't want to see.

Users can add values to those rules as many as they like, they accept simple text or regular expression, as well as filters.

When a message comes, filters are tried one by one, if there is any filter than can match the message and not reject it, it will be forwarded to TG-FOCUS chat.

A focus filter matches the message if it matches any filter's:

• titles and
• senders and
• keywords

Note that an empty rule(i.e., you haven't configure it) matches everthing.

If a focus filter fails to match the incoming message, the next focus filter will be tried. If all focus filters fail to match it, the message will be discarded.

A focus filter rejects the message if it matches any filter's:

• no-title or
• no senders or
• no-keywords

Note thta if any focus filter rejects the message, the next focus filter will not be tried, and the message will be discarded.

(You can think of the first three rules as whitelist, the last three rules as blacklist)

Development

Linux

Distribution:

• Debian 11 (Bullseye)
  • note: bullseye-like distros might work, but it won't be considered an issue if not working there.

Software:

• bash, git, sudo, apt, etc.
  • run bash ci/prep-libs-deb11-x86_64.bash to automatically prepare them.
• custom built GCC
  • run bash ci/prep-toolc-deb11-x86_64.bash to automatically prepare them.

Building:

• run bash ci/build-tgfocus-deb11-x86_64.bash to get a Release build.
• run DDD=1 bash ci/build-tgfocus-deb11-x86_64.bash to get a Debug build.

Contributing

tg-focus is still far from perfect, any form of contribution is welcomed!

• Ask question (open an issue with label "question")
• Bug Report (open an issue with label "bug")
• Feature Request (open an issue with label "enhancement")
• Documentation Improvement
• Code Contribution (tg-focus follows GCC code style)

ToDo list

This is a list of TODOs that are certainly to be finished in the near future:

• Project Logo (will be used as TG-FOCUS chat icon)
• TGFCMD Filters Configuration's Look
• Forwarded message's Look
• Configuration in JSON Format
• Windows Port
• macOS Port
• BSD Port

Can I trust tg-focus?

Yes.

First of all, consider that tg-focus is a GPL-licensed free software. As for privacy, only credentials necessary for tdlib initialization are saved on the user's machine. And they are completely yours-irrelavent. As for source code, tg-focus's source as well as its dependencies' source are completely open.

Most importantly, all of released binaries are built by not any individual, but Github-hosted machines. Check github actions for more details.

Is tg-focus a crawler?

Despite tg-focus is essentially collecting messsages, tg-focus is not, and will never be a crawler: forwarded messages is designed to be difficult to parse, and the forwarding is hardly real-time. If you use it as a crawler, you will realize this is a wrong tool over the course of time.

I am here to help telegram users see or omit the messages according to their own preferences. Using tg-focus to crawl messages would be absolutely a misuse. And also we will ensure such usages to become more and more challenging in future releases, because my primary goal is to help catalyze more constructive and meaningful conversions on Telegram.

Check if tg-focus is for you or not:

It's for you if

1. You think messages are overwhelming, and still don't want to miss out any messages/updates that match your personal preference.

2. Your think some kinds of messages do not match your personal preference and want to ignore them, yet they have reason to exist.

It's NOT for you if

1. You want to scrape/crawl messages from chats/channels.

License

tg-focus is licensed under GNU General Public License Version 3.0. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.