Telegram as a library

If people send you books, comics or magazines on Telegram, you can gather them in a private channel of yours and read them in Kevra as one more library. The files stay on Telegram: Kevra only reads them.

Plus plan: connecting Telegram needs the Plus plan.

Before you start

Use one channel per kind of thing: one for books, another for comics, another for magazines. Each channel is a library and its kind is set for the whole channel, so it's best not to mix them.

How to connect it

1. In the Library tab, tap the name at the top to open Your libraries and, at the bottom, Add a library.
2. On Remote library, tap Add a library → Connect Telegram.
3. In Telegram, create a private channel (or use one you already have).
4. Add the Kevra bot shown on the screen as a channel admin (the Open… button takes you to it).
5. Kevra gives you a code (for example, KV-XXXXXX). Tap Copy and post it in the channel. The code is valid for 30 minutes.
6. Kevra spots it, creates the library with the channel's name and deletes the code message.
7. Choose whether the channel is Books, Magazines or Comics and tap Save and sync.

How it works afterwards

• Everything already in the channel comes in, and whatever you post or forward later shows up by itself. Whatever you delete from the channel disappears from Kevra too.
• The bot replies with reactions on each message: 👀 when it gets it, 👌 when it's in Kevra and 🤷 if it can't be shown (photos, videos…). If the channel has reactions turned off, you won't see them.
• Anything that just arrived has a New label.
• Magazines and comics can be Read without downloading, like in any cloud. More in Cloud libraries.

Audiobooks

The channel's audiobooks (M4B, MP3…) show up in the Audio tab, with their cover, their page and their length. Several MP3s of the same book in a row count as a single audiobook.

What's different is how they're downloaded: they weigh hundreds of megabytes or several gigabytes, so they don't go through Kevra. You download them in Telegram.

1. On its page, tap download and then Open in Telegram: that message in the channel opens.
2. Download it in Telegram.
3. Tap Share → Kevra. It comes into your library as that audiobook.

If it's several files, save them to Files from Telegram and add them together from Kevra (Add a book → A file on this device, picking them all). To open the message you need to be in the Telegram channel.

Privacy

Kevra only sees that channel: not your chats or your contacts. It's a bot, not your Telegram account. And your files aren't stored on our servers.

With several people

• For others to upload things, make them channel admins in Telegram: whatever they post or forward comes in just the same.
• For people who only want to read, share the library from Kevra. They don't need Telegram, except to download audiobooks. See Sharing a library.

What isn't possible

Downloading an audiobook without Telegram: people who aren't in the channel see it in the catalogue but can't download it.