How Do You Replace Words or Links While Forwarding Telegram Messages?

Relaying a message rarely means relaying it verbatim. A channel name that should become yours, a referral link that should point somewhere else, a recurring promotional line that has no business in your destination: find and replace handles all three while the message is in flight.

How the rules are applied

Each rule is a pair: what to look for, and what to put in its place. They are applied one after another, in order, to the message text and to the caption of an attachment. A replacement can be empty, which is how you delete a line rather than swap it.

Replacements are applied to every occurrence, not only the first, so a link that appears three times is swapped three times.

Formatting survives the swap

This is the part most tools get wrong. In a Telegram message, bold, italics, code and clickable links are not characters inside the text: they are ranges attached to positions in it. Change the length of the text and every range after that point is off by a few characters, which is how a replacement ends up making half a sentence bold and breaking a link.

Every replacement here recalculates those positions as it goes, so what was bold before is bold after, and links keep pointing where they pointed. You will not find a broken formatting range in the destination because a word got shorter.

When a word list is not enough

There is a regular-expression mode for patterns rather than fixed strings: any link belonging to a particular domain, a code that always has the same shape, a line that starts with a given symbol. Captured groups can be used in the replacement, so you can keep part of what you matched and change the rest.

The same caution as everywhere else applies: test on a couple of real messages before leaving it running, because a pattern that is slightly too greedy will quietly eat more than you meant.

What it runs on

If a message is edited at the source and edit sync is on, the replacements are applied again to the new text, so the destination stays consistent instead of reverting to the original wording.

The text of a normal message.
The caption of a photo, video or file.
Nothing else: it does not rename files, does not touch what is inside an image, and does not change buttons.

Which plans include it

Find and replace is part of the paid plans, from Smart upwards. On the Free plan the setting can still be there from a previous plan, but it is deliberately not applied, so a rule that used to rewrite links relays them untouched instead. The current plan comparison is on the pricing page.

Common questions

Can I replace a link in a forwarded Telegram message?

Yes. Add a rule with the link to look for and the one to put in its place; every occurrence in the text and in the caption is swapped as the message is relayed. Regular-expression mode covers the case where the link varies.

Does replacing text break the bold, italics or links in the message?

No. Telegram stores formatting as ranges tied to positions in the text, so a naive replacement shifts them and breaks the message. Each replacement here recalculates those positions, so formatting and links stay where they belong.

How do I delete a line instead of replacing it?

Set the replacement to nothing. The matched text is removed and the rest of the message, including its formatting, stays intact.

Are replacements applied to captions as well as text?

Yes, to both. They do not touch file names, text inside images, or buttons.

Is find and replace available on the Free plan?

No, it starts on the Smart plan. If a rule was configured while on a paid plan and the account later moves to Free, the replacement is simply not applied and the message is relayed as it is.

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