About platform ​

Telegram Mini Apps is a technology created by developers of the famous messenger Telegram. The main it’s purpose is to provide developers more flexible communication channel with Telegram users.

It may seem not clear, but Mini Apps are not self-served services. The first thing to note is, technically, this technology is just an add-on for such already-known Telegram functionality as Telegram Bots. So, currently, creating a Mini App without creating a Telegram Bot is not available.

The platform offers a high variety of available methods to communicate with the Telegram application to make your web applications look more native, allow them to simulate native application's behavior, and, finally, mimic native applications.

Required technologies ​

Before starting to create an application on the Mini Apps platform, it is important to know what Mini Apps is from its technical side. This will lead the developer to language and technologies selection.

Internally, Mini Apps are usual web applications, which are displayed in WebView. In other words, they are just a set of static files (mostly .js, .css, and .html). So, to create Mini App, it is enough to learn standard front-end development technologies, such as:

• JavaScript
• CSS
• HTML

Really simple, isn't it? But to make much more serious and bigger applications, we recommend using more solid technologies, such as TypeScript, React, SCSS, etc.

So, if we want to create Mini App, we should create a standard web application with any technologies stack. The only 1 thing Telegram needs from the developer is the application URL to download it from. It will be used as a source for WebView, which will lead to application download and display.

Usage ​

As we mentioned in the previous section, Mini Apps are add-ons for Telegram Bots. Telegram Bots is also known technology that provides functionality for a wide list of use cases. You could create a bot to buy a ticket in the cinema, make him tell user jokes, generate random numbers, etc. In other words, the bot can do whatever the developer thinks about.

The problem is, the visual part of bots is not as good and functional as it could be. Their current implementation is "console-like" which is more appropriate for developers, not common users. That's the time for Mini Apps to show up.

Using Mini Apps, developers are allowed to create more user-friendly and complex interfaces, which are commonly used by usual users. With this technology, the developer is still able to communicate with the bot behind Mini App, but, additionally, he can provide some more flexible interfaces to interact with.

Mini Apps are usually used when a standard bot interface is not enough. Create a Mini App when you want to make user life easier when displaying several buttons is not even close to the functionality, you want to provide.

Supported applications ​

Currently, Telegram Mini Apps is presented on the wide list of Telegram applications:

• Telegram for Android android;
• Telegram for iOS ios;
• Telegram for macOS macos;
• Telegram Desktop tdesktop;
• Telegram Web A web;
• Telegram Web K webk;

Other applications either don't have implementation for Telegram Mini Apps, or support it too poorly. This will probably be useful in the next sections of the documentation.