How do I set up Telegram notifications for France visa slots?

With Visa Master, you create your own Telegram bot via @BotFather, copy the bot token into the extension settings, and add your personal chat ID. The extension then pings your bot directly — no third party involved.

Do I need to share my Telegram account to get visa slot alerts?

No. Visa Master uses a bring-your-own-bot model: you create a bot in Telegram, you own the token, and the extension messages your bot directly from your local device. Your Telegram account credentials are never involved.

What is @BotFather on Telegram?

@BotFather is Telegram's official bot for creating and managing bots. It is the only legitimate way to create a Telegram bot and obtain a bot token. The process takes about five minutes.

Is the Visa Master Telegram bot token stored securely?

Yes. The bot token is stored in chrome.storage.local on your device. It is never transmitted to torly.ai and never used to access any Telegram account — it only sends messages to the specific chat ID you configure.

Can I get France visa Telegram notifications on my phone while away from my computer?

Yes. Once configured, the Visa Master extension sends a Telegram message to your bot when a slot appears. Telegram delivers this to your phone via its standard push notification system, regardless of whether your computer's browser is visible.

France Visa Telegram Notifications: Setup Without Sharing Your Account

Most Telegram visa alert channels require you to join a group chat — and often pay for access. A few ask you to share your TLScontact session or Telegram phone number with a third party to enable personalised alerts. None of that is necessary. If you are using Visa Master, you can have Telegram notifications sent to a bot you created, that you own, that pings your phone the moment a France visa slot appears — and no one else ever sees the alert.

This is the complete setup guide.

Why the "Bring Your Own Bot" Approach Is Worth the Five Minutes

When you join a Telegram channel to get slot alerts, you are at the mercy of whoever runs the channel: their uptime, their monitoring frequency, their accuracy, and their decision about whether to keep the channel running. More importantly, your notification is broadcast to everyone in the channel — which means that by the time you see the alert, potentially hundreds of other people have already seen it and are already navigating to TLScontact.

The Telegram bot ecosystem review covers this in detail. The short version: channel-based alerts are structurally slower than a local extension sending a notification directly to your personal bot.

Visa Master's BYOB (bring your own bot) model means:

Your bot, your notification: Only your device knows about the slot. No one else in any channel is racing you.
No third party in the loop: The extension sends a message from your device to your bot token. The token never passes through torly.ai.
Full control: You can revoke the bot token at any time, change your bot, or turn off notifications without affecting the slot monitoring.

Step 1: Create a Telegram Bot with @BotFather

Open Telegram on your phone or desktop and search for @BotFather — it has a blue verified tick. This is Telegram's official bot management service.

Start a chat with @BotFather and send:

/newbot

BotFather will ask you for two things:

A name for your bot — this is the display name. Call it anything: "France Visa Alerts" works fine.
A username for your bot — must end in bot, must be unique across all Telegram bots. Something like yourname_visaalerts_bot.

Once you confirm both, BotFather sends you a message containing your bot token — a string that looks like 123456789:ABCDefGhIJKLmNoPQRsTUVwxYZ. Copy this entire string. You will need it in Step 3.

Do not share your bot token. Anyone with the token can send messages through your bot. Treat it like a password.

Step 2: Find Your Personal Chat ID

Your bot token lets the extension identify which bot to use. Your chat ID tells the extension which specific Telegram conversation to send messages to. You need both.

The easiest way to find your chat ID:

Start a chat with your newly created bot. Send it any message — just type "hello".
In your browser, navigate to: https://api.telegram.org/bot<YOUR_BOT_TOKEN>/getUpdates (replace <YOUR_BOT_TOKEN> with the token from Step 1).
The response is JSON. Look for "chat":{"id": — the number after it is your chat ID. It looks like 987654321 for personal chats, or a negative number for group chats.

Alternatively, you can message @userinfobot on Telegram — it replies with your user ID, which is the same as your personal chat ID.

Step 3: Enter Your Bot Token and Chat ID in Visa Master Settings

Open the Visa Master extension settings (click the extension icon → Settings, or navigate to the extension's options page in Chrome).

Find the Telegram Notifications section. You will see two fields:

Bot Token — paste the token from Step 1.
Chat ID — paste the numeric ID from Step 2.

Click Test Notification. Within a few seconds, you should receive a test message in your Telegram bot conversation. If you do, the configuration is correct.

The bot token is stored locally in chrome.storage.local and is never transmitted to torly.ai. It is used only to send notifications from your device to your Telegram chat.

— Visa Master settings page

Step 4: Verify the Notification Flow

Before you start relying on these alerts, verify the full chain works as expected:

Confirm you received the test notification on your phone (not just desktop Telegram).
Check that the Telegram message includes the slot details you care about — centre, date, time.
If you are away from your computer frequently, check that your Chrome browser will remain open with the TLScontact page loaded. The extension's service worker runs in the background, but the TLScontact session needs to be active for monitoring to work.

The extension has a smart scheduling mode that adjusts polling frequency based on known TLScontact slot release patterns — polling more aggressively during hours when slots are most likely to appear, and less aggressively during quiet periods to avoid unnecessary battery and resource use.

What Happens When a Real Slot Appears

When Visa Master detects an available slot:

Desktop notification fires — with sound, immediately.
Telegram message sent — to your configured bot, within milliseconds of the desktop notification.
Badge updates on the extension icon to indicate a slot is available.
If you are on Premium, the auto-book flow begins simultaneously (see the auto-book mechanics article for the full sequence).

If you are using Free tier, you need to click through to TLScontact and complete the booking manually. The Telegram notification on your phone is your trigger — tap it, log into TLScontact if needed, and book the slot. Speed matters: competitive slots disappear in seconds.

Privacy: What the Token Knows and Does Not Know

Your bot token gives the Visa Master extension the ability to send messages to your Telegram chat. That is all it does. Specifically:

What the bot token allows	What it does NOT allow
Send messages to your configured chat ID	Read your Telegram messages
Send files or photos to your chat	Access your contacts
Change the bot's profile	Log into your Telegram account
Be revoked by you at any time via @BotFather	Persist if you revoke it

The token is stored in chrome.storage.local on your device. It is not transmitted to torly.ai — not in logs, not in the Premium payment flow, not in any analytics. The full privacy architecture confirms this.

If you ever want to reset your Telegram notifications, go back to @BotFather, send /revoke, select your bot, and confirm. The old token is immediately invalidated. Generate a new one with /token if you want to continue using the same bot with a fresh token.

Telegram Groups and Multiple Recipients

If you want alerts to go to a group — for example, if your partner also wants to be notified and can book the slot if you're unavailable — you can use a group chat ID instead of your personal chat ID.

To do this:

Add your bot to a Telegram group.
Send a message in the group.
Use the getUpdates API call to retrieve the group's chat ID (it will be a negative number).
Enter that negative number as the Chat ID in Visa Master settings.

Messages sent to the group are visible to all group members, so anyone in the group can respond to a slot alert.

What About Telegram Groups Run by Others?

The France Visa Telegram bots review covers the wider ecosystem. The brief summary: public community channels are useful for understanding slot patterns and hearing from other applicants, but they are not a substitute for a local extension sending personalised, private, low-latency alerts to your own bot.

Install Visa Master Free from the Chrome Web Store to get started. The Telegram setup takes under five minutes and means you will never miss a slot because you stepped away from your computer.

For more on how the full notification and monitoring system works, read How Visa Master Watches TLScontact Without Touching Your Login. For the broader picture of what methods are available beyond Telegram, see How to Book a France Visa Appointment in 2026: 7 Methods, Ranked.