In this article
Pause a video at the moment you mean, open the player's menu, and copy a link that carries that moment with it. Whoever opens it lands on the post with the playhead already there.
It is the difference between telling somebody where to look and putting them there, and it takes about the same effort as sending the link plain.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Copy a link that opens at a chosen second.
- check_circle Mark a moment in a chat without any link at all.
- check_circle Know which method survives being forwarded.
- check_circle Work out why yours did not turn blue.
The share option changes as the video plays — it offers the position you are currently paused at.
content_cut Two ways to point, and they behave differently
The first is a link with the time built into it, taken from the player. It goes anywhere — another chat, a note, a document, a message to somebody who is not in the conversation — and it keeps working, because everything it needs is inside the address.
The second is a timecode written in a reply. You reply to the video, type the time, and the numbers become tappable for everyone in that chat. Nothing is copied and nothing carries an address; the connection exists because the reply is attached to the video.
That difference decides which one to use. A link travels and a reply does not: forward a reply out of the chat and the video it referred to stays behind, leaving grey text. A reply is better inside the conversation, because it sits under the thing it is about and anybody scrolling past sees both.
How do I get the link with the time in it?
Play the video, pause where you mean, and open the player's own menu — the share option there offers the current position rather than the start. Copy it and it behaves like any other link, except that the player it opens is already cued.
My timecode did not become tappable.
Almost always because the message is not attached to a video. A time written as a new message in the same chat is just text, even directly underneath the video, because nothing tells Telegram which video is meant. Reply to the video itself, or put the time in the caption when you are the one sending it.
Does the format matter?
Only in the ordinary way: minutes and seconds, with hours in front when a recording is long enough to need them. There is no special syntax to learn and no punctuation to get right. What decides the outcome is what the message is attached to, not how the number is written.
Can I do this for audio as well?
Yes — a long recording, a podcast, a talk. It is arguably more useful there than for video, because audio gives you nothing to scan visually and dragging a scrubber to hunt for a passage is close to impossible.
Do I need the paid subscription?
No. Both the link and the reply timecode are ordinary features available to everybody, and the person receiving one does not need anything either.
What is the best use for this?
A chapter list. Several times written one to a line, each with a few words after it, turns an hour-long recording into something people can navigate instead of something they mean to watch and never do. It costs a minute to write and it is the most valuable thing you can add to any long video you post.
forward Which one survives leaving the chat
If the point is to send somebody to a specific moment in something public — a talk in a channel, a recording everybody can reach — the link is the right tool, because it is self-contained. It can be pasted into an email, kept in a document, or sent to a person who has never opened that channel.
If the point is to say "this bit, here, in what we are discussing", the reply is better, and it is better precisely because it does not travel. It sits attached to the video in the conversation, where the context is, and anybody reading later sees the pointer and the thing it points at together.
The failure people run into is using a reply and then forwarding it onward. What arrives is a set of numbers with nothing behind them, which reads as a mistake rather than as a reference — and the fix is to forward the video and the reply together, or to use a link in the first place.
settings Doing it
- Pause where you mean The share option follows the playhead.
- Copy the link from the player's menu It carries the position.
- Or reply to the video and type the time Attached, not adjacent.
- Use a link when it leaves the chat A reply does not travel.
- Write a chapter list for anything long One line per moment.
- Start it at zero So people can get back.
This page points at a second inside a video. The curriculum step covers the rest of the anchors: linking to a particular message, quoting the exact part you are answering, and keeping a long conversation navigable.
At a glance
- 1Link at a time
Copy a link that opens the video at a chosen second.
- 2Timecode in chat
A time in a reply jumps within that chat only.
- 3Forwarding
Links survive forwarding; reply timecodes do not.
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