In this article
Write 0:45 next to a video in Telegram and it stops being text. It becomes a link that opens the video at forty-five seconds, and a list of them becomes a chapter index that anyone can jump around in.
Nothing is switched on for this and there is no syntax to learn beyond the colon. What trips people up is where the timecode has to be written — put it in the wrong message and it stays grey.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Turn a time into a tappable jump point in a video you sent.
- check_circle Do the same beside a YouTube link so it opens at the right moment.
- check_circle Write a chapter list for a long recording in one message.
- check_circle Work out why a timecode did not turn into a link.
The timecode turns blue as soon as the message is sent — that colour is the test for whether it worked.
smart_display A time written near a video is a link
Telegram reads your message looking for things that are obviously addresses — a web link, a username, a phone number. A timecode is treated the same way, with one extra condition: there has to be a video for it to point at.
Three shapes are recognised, and they are the shapes people already write. 0:45 for under a minute, 12:30 for minutes and seconds, 1:05:40 when there are hours. No brackets, no markup, no special characters.
The result is a jump rather than a new message. Tapping it opens the video and moves the playhead, which is the difference between telling somebody where to look and making them drag a scrubber bar with their thumb.
Same text, two places, two results
This is the whole feature and the whole failure mode. The timecode has to be attached to the video, and one of these columns attaches it.
| Written with the video | Written as a separate message | |
|---|---|---|
| A video you are uploading | Put the chapter list in the caption. The times become links and travel with the file wherever it is forwarded afterwards. | Posted underneath as its own message, the identical text is inert. Telegram has no way to know which video it refers to. |
| Somebody else's video | Reply to the video message. Your times point at it, which is how you annotate an upload you did not make — and how several people can each mark a different moment in a channel's comments. | A message in the same chat is not a reply, even directly beneath it. Proximity is not attachment, and this is the mistake people make most. |
| A link to a video elsewhere | Paste the link and write the times in the same message. Tapping one opens the player at that point. | Link first, times second, and you now have two messages with no connection between them. |
| How the number is written | Both 0:45 and 1:02:30 are understood. What decides the outcome is what the message is attached to, not the punctuation. | Rewriting 45s as 0:45 changes nothing on a message that stands alone. The format was never the problem. |
| A time with no video near it | Stays plain text, correctly — "see you at 6:30" is a time of day, not a seek instruction. | Also plain text. The one row where both columns agree, and the one people report as a bug. |
The rule in one line: the timecode and the video have to be in the same message, or in a reply to it.
forward Only one of the two survives being forwarded
A caption belongs to the video. Forward that message to another chat and the chapter list goes with it, still pointing at the right places, because the text and the file are one object. A reply is a different arrangement: it is a second message that refers to the first, and forwarding it sends the reference without what it referred to. The times arrive as grey text in a chat where the video does not exist.
That decides which method to use for anything meant to be passed on. A recorded session you expect people to share should carry its chapters in the caption, even if that means writing them before you know what the chapters are and editing the caption afterwards. Annotating in a reply is the right tool when the annotation belongs to that conversation and nowhere else.
The same asymmetry explains a smaller irritation. Forwarding a video out of a channel takes the caption along, so a chapter list an admin wrote once keeps working for every reader who passes it on — which is a better return than almost anything else that can be added to a long recording.
settings Writing one
- Attach the video, or paste the link Either an upload of your own or a link to one.
- Write the times in the caption or the same message Plain colon notation. Nothing else is needed.
- Put a label after each time The time is the link; the words after it are what make a list worth reading.
- Send, then look at the colour Blue means it parsed. Grey means the message is not attached to a video.
- Tap one to check It should open the player at that point. If it opens at the start, the timecode was longer than the video.
This page is one kind of anchor — a point inside a video. The curriculum step covers the rest of them: linking to a particular message, quoting the exact part you are answering, and how a long conversation stays navigable.
At a glance
- 1Clickable times
Write a time like 1:23 in a caption or reply to jump to it.
- 2With links
A timecode beside a YouTube link opens at that moment.
- 3Not turning blue?
It must be in the same message or a reply to the video.
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