In this article
Anybody running more than two or three rooms meets the same awkward moment. Somebody new arrives, and welcoming them properly means pasting five links with a sentence explaining each one. They will join two of them and never find the rest.
A shared folder turns that set into a single link. It also creates an ongoing relationship you should understand before you send it out, because the link stays attached to the folder — what you add later reaches everybody who used it.
What you will be able to do after this step
- check_circle Describe exactly what somebody sees when they open your folder link.
- check_circle Say which folders can be shared and which cannot, and why.
- check_circle Add rooms later without anybody being joined to anything silently.
- check_circle Recognise the cases where a bundle is the wrong answer.
folder_special What the recipient actually gets
Opening the link does not join anybody to anything. It opens a panel listing the rooms in the folder, with each one ticked, and the person can untick whatever they do not want before confirming. One tap then joins what is left, and the folder appears in their chat list as a tab.
That difference is the whole value of the feature, and it is not really about saving taps. Five separate links arrive as five separate decisions made in ignorance — nobody knows how many more are coming or how the rooms relate. A folder shows the entire shape at once, so the person chooses with the map in front of them.
Rooms they are already in are recognised and marked as such, so nothing is duplicated and nobody is asked to rejoin somewhere they have been for a year.
rule Which folders can be shared, and which cannot
Step 019 introduced two kinds of folder, and the distinction becomes load-bearing here. A folder built from an explicit list of chats can be shared. A folder defined by a rule — everything unread, everything from non-contacts, all your groups — cannot, because it has no fixed membership. There is no list to hand over; there is only a description of your own chat list, which would mean nothing to anybody else.
The second requirement concerns private rooms. To include one in a shareable folder you must be an administrator there with permission to invite people by link. That is not a formality — it is the check that stops a folder from becoming a way to pass around access to private rooms that somebody merely happens to be a member of. Public channels and groups need no such permission, since anybody could find them by searching anyway.
When a room in your folder fails that test, the sharing screen tells you so and simply leaves it out. The link still works for the rest, which is a sensible behaviour and also a quiet one — it is worth reading the list on that screen rather than assuming everything came along.
Somebody opens your folder link. What happens next?
The panel is a preview with everything pre-selected, not an action already taken. Saying this in the message alongside the link measurably changes how many people open it, because a bundle of unknown size is exactly the thing careful people decline. If a room in the folder has join requests switched on, that room still asks for approval separately — the folder does not bypass anything a room has set up for itself.
You add two new channels to the folder a month later. What do existing subscribers experience?
The link stays connected to the folder, so updating it puts a small banner on the folder tab for everybody who used it. They are never joined without tapping. This is the feature's real advantage over a list of links — you can announce a new room without posting anywhere — and also its cost, because each update is a small request made of everybody at once. Batch changes rather than updating the link every time you create something.
You delete the invite link. What happens to the people who used it?
Revoking a link closes the door for future arrivals and has no effect on anybody who already walked through it, exactly as with the ordinary invite links in Step 066. Their memberships are real memberships. The one thing you do lose is the ability to push updates to that particular group of people, since the connection ran through the link — so revoke when you want the distribution to stop, not as a way to undo it.
A colleague asks you to bundle a private group you are a member of but do not run. Can you?
Membership is not the same as the right to bring people in, and this check is the reason the feature is safe to use at all. Without it, one member of a private room could hand its door to an unlimited audience by including it in a bundle. The right move is to ask whoever runs that room for a link of their own, and post it alongside the folder with a sentence of context.
task_alt
touch_app Try it now — five minutes
Four steps, and the first two are where the decisions are.
- Build the folder as a list, not as a rule Settings, then chat folders, then a new one. Pick the rooms by hand. If you already have a folder built from conditions, make a second one for sharing rather than trying to convert it.
- Open the folder and choose to share it Telegram checks your permissions for each private room and shows you which ones qualify. Read that list — it is the only moment you will be told that something was left out.
- Name the link before you send it anywhere You can make more than one link for the same folder and give each a name. One in the channel description and one for direct invitations tells you which route people actually arrive by, without any tracking parameters.
- Post it with one sentence about what it is What the rooms have in common, and that they can untick anything. Two lines, and they are worth more than the link on its own.
link_off When a bundle is the wrong answer
The feature is good enough that it gets used where something simpler or something bigger was needed.
When there are only two rooms. Two links with a sentence each are clearer than a folder, and they do not commit you to maintaining a subscription relationship with everybody who joined.
When the rooms have nothing in common. A folder is a claim that these things belong together. Bundling your channel, a client project and an unrelated hobby group produces a tab nobody wants and several rooms people quietly leave.
When it is really one conversation. If you built six rooms because a single group got noisy, a folder link is organising a problem rather than fixing it. Topics inside one group, covered in Step 057, keep the conversation in one place while letting people ignore the parts that are not theirs. A channel with a discussion group attached, from Step 075, is the other shape that often turns out to be what was wanted.
When you want people to read one thing. A bundle spreads attention. If there is one room that matters and four that are optional, sending the one link is more effective than offering five and hoping.
group_add Adding rooms later without a broadcast
This is the part of the feature that earns its keep and it is worth being deliberate about. When you add chats to a shared folder and update the link, everybody who joined through it gets a small prompt on that folder offering the new rooms. Nobody is moved anywhere until they tap it.
What that gives you is a way to announce something without posting an announcement. A new regional group, a channel for releases, a room for a specific project — the people who already opted into this cluster are told, in the place where the cluster lives, without a message going to anybody who did not.
The cost is the same mechanism seen from the other side. Every update is a small ask made of everybody at once, and a folder that produces a prompt every fortnight becomes a folder people stop looking at. Collect changes and update once a month at most. If you find yourself wanting to update more often than that, the thing you are actually running is a channel.
help Common questions at this stage
Can people see who else joined through the link?
No. The folder is not a group and has no membership of its own — it is a set of rooms, and each room's own member list works exactly as it always did. Somebody who joins a public channel through a folder is as visible as anybody else in that channel, and no more. There is no list of "people who used this link" that members can see.
Does the recipient's folder stay in sync with mine?
Partly, and the asymmetry is deliberate. Additions reach them as a prompt they can accept. Their own changes — unticking a room at the start, leaving one later, adding a chat of their own to the tab — are theirs and do not travel back to you. It is a shared starting point rather than a folder you continue to control on somebody else's device.
Is there a limit on folders, links or the number of chats?
Yes on all three, with more generous allowances on a paid subscription. The numbers move, so the useful approach is to build what you need and let the app tell you when you have reached an edge, rather than planning around a figure from an article. In practice the limits are comfortable for anybody organising a real community and only become visible to people bundling rooms at scale.
Can I include bots, or my own saved messages?
Folders themselves can contain anything in your chat list, but the shareable version is about rooms other people can join. A bot conversation is between that bot and each individual user, and your own saved messages are yours alone — neither is something that can be handed over. If a bot is part of how your community works, mention it in the welcome message with its username rather than expecting the folder to carry it.
Somebody unticked most of the rooms. Can I tell?
Not directly, and it is better this way — the ability to decline quietly is what makes people willing to open the link at all. What you can see is each room's own member count over time, which tells you the same thing with less precision and no awkwardness. If one room in a bundle consistently fails to grow, that is useful information about the room, not about the people.
Can I use this to move an existing community onto a new set of rooms?
It is the best tool available for it, with one caveat. Post the link in the old room with an explanation and a deadline, and expect to post it more than once — people read announcements at very different rates. The caveat is that anybody who does not tap it stays behind, so a migration is never complete, and you should plan to keep the old room readable rather than deleting it the week after.
At a glance
- 1An offer, not a join
People see the whole list and untick what they do not want.
- 2Later additions
New chats added to the folder are suggested to everyone with the link.
- 3Limits
Rule-based folders cannot be shared; private chats need invite rights.
Updated
