Installing telegram-send for scripted Telegram notifications

telegram-send is a command-line tool for sending messages to Telegram — useful for scripts, cron jobs, and other automation that needs a simple notification channel.

Prerequisites

• Python 3 with pip3 on the host.

Steps

1. Install telegram-send

sudo pip3 install telegram-send

2. Work around a python-telegram-bot incompatibility

Depending on which python-telegram-bot version pip resolves, telegram-send can fail on first run with:

cannot import name 'MAX_MESSAGE_LENGTH' from 'telegram.constants'

This happens when a newer python-telegram-bot release removes/renames the constant telegram-send’s (older, unmaintained-at-the-time) code imports directly. Force-reinstall a known compatible version:

pip3 install --force-reinstall -v "python-telegram-bot==13.5"

This is a version-pin workaround, not a real fix — check whether it’s still needed against the current telegram-send release before assuming it applies; a properly updated telegram-send may no longer need the pin, or may need a different one.

Verify

Run telegram-send interactively once to complete its bot-token setup, then send a test message:

telegram-send "test message"

Troubleshooting

• cannot import name 'MAX_MESSAGE_LENGTH' from 'telegram.constants': apply the python-telegram-bot==13.5 pin above.

Related

Sources

• Legacy wiki.js (de, translated): telegram-send CLI install — private source; German-only wiki.js page, no English original existed