Getting started
Add Cookiebot to a Telegram group and have it working in about five minutes
Cookiebot is a moderation and utility bot for Telegram groups. It greets new members, screens joiners with a captcha, keeps sticker floods and drive-by image spam under control, holds the group's rules, and carries about forty everyday commands. It speaks English, Portuguese and Spanish, and every command works in all three regardless of which language the group replies in.
Telegram is the whole interface. There is no account to create and no dashboard to log into.
1. Add the bot and make it an admin
Add the bot your operator gave you to the group, then open Manage group → Administrators and promote it.
Promotion is not optional. A Telegram bot without admin rights cannot delete a message, remove a member, or read most of what is posted — so a bot that is present but not promoted looks broken while behaving exactly as Telegram intends.
| Right | What needs it |
|---|---|
| Delete messages | Sticker-flood control, the media hold on new members, clearing a failed captcha |
| Ban users | Removing a joiner who fails the captcha, blocking a listed account |
| Invite users via link | Letting a removed joiner come back and try again |
| Pin messages | Pinning the rules, and pinning a giveaway announcement |
2. Check that it can see the group
/isaliveA reply means the bot can both read the group and post in it — which is more than "it appears in the member list" tells you.
No reply? Usually Telegram's privacy mode, which stops bots from seeing
ordinary messages. Commands addressed to the bot still arrive, so /isalive
answering while normal chat seems ignored is expected. Some features (link
rewriting, sticker counting, the AI replies) need privacy mode off, which only
the bot's owner can change in BotFather.
3. Check the group's language
A brand-new group inherits its language from the Telegram client of whoever
added the bot: a pt-BR client makes it a Portuguese group, es-419 a Spanish
one. Change it whenever you like:
/configPick Language and reply with pt, eng or es. That changes what the bot
says; it never changes what the bot listens for — /rules, /regras and
/reglas are the same command in every group. Changing it also relabels the
command menu Telegram shows next to the message box.
/config answers in a private chat, not in the group: the bot replies "I've
sent you a message in the private chat to configure!" and the menu opens there.
Telegram does not let a bot open that conversation, so press Start on the bot
once, in private, before running /config — otherwise there is nowhere for
the menu to go and the bot will say it could not reach you.
4. Set a welcome and the rules
/newwelcome
/newrulesBoth are two-step: the bot posts a prompt, and you reply to that prompt with
the text you want. Typing the text on the same line as the command does
nothing. In a welcome message, <user> is replaced with the new member's name —
see Welcome, rules and language for the other spellings
that work.
Only an admin's reply is accepted — including an anonymous admin, whose message arrives from GroupAnonymousBot rather than from an account.
5. Decide what runs unattended
The defaults are deliberately mild. Two settings do most of the work, and both are covered on Configuring a group:
- 🕒 CAPTCHA — how long a joiner has to answer.
0turns screening off. - 🕒 Limbo — how long a new member must wait before posting images and files. Off by default, and the single most effective setting against drive-by image spam.
What you have just turned on
Moderation
The captcha, sticker floods, the media hold, and the block lists checked at the door.
Welcome, rules and language
Greetings, the rules, the three languages, and the bot's per-event skins.
Fun
Dice, ships, battles, memes, fortunes, and the bot answering when you talk to it.
Everyday utilities
Birthdays, calling the admins, link previews that work, YouTube search.
AI features
Conversational replies, voice transcription, music recognition, image lookups.
Giveaways and events
Raffles drawn in the group, and countdown posters for partnered conventions.
Cross-posting
Submitting a post, the approval step, and scheduled reposts.
Commands
The full list, with every Portuguese and Spanish spelling.