Telephoto

Telephoto is a simple, privacy-focused Android app that backs up your photos to Telegram using a bot you control.

Unlike traditional cloud services, your images go directly to your own Telegram chat — giving you unlimited storage, fast access, and full ownership of your data.

Key capabilities include:

- Offline OCR / Text Recognition — find photos by text in 100+ languages - Smart sync — only uploads new or missing photos - High-resolution backups — supports images up to 10 MB each - Folder selection — choose which folders to back up or exclude - Parallel OCR — faster batch processing - Custom Telegram bot — only you can access your files

📱 Getting Started

1️⃣ Install the App

Install the APK on your Android device.

2️⃣ Telegram Bot Setup

1. Message @BotFather and create a new bot 2. Copy the Bot API Token 3. Start a chat with your bot (/start) 4. Retrieve your Chat ID using @Check_Telegram_IDBot 5. Paste both values into the app settings

3️⃣ Required Permissions

🛑 Telephoto does not auto-request permissions. You must grant them manually:

Storage / Files Access is required — photos & videos permission is not.

Grant permission:

Settings > Apps > Special app access > All files access

4️⃣ Backup & Sync Options

- Manual Backup — upload everything immediately - Sync Mode — upload only new or missing photos

Smart scanning saves battery and bandwidth. First-time OCR may take some minutes depending on image content.

5️⃣ Searching Photos with OCR

- Automatically detect text inside images - Search screenshots, documents, and photos containing text - Offline, multi-language support (100+ languages) - Re-run OCR on specific images when needed

6️⃣ Backup & Restore App Data

- Back up photo metadata (for sync tracking & OCR) - Save app settings and configuration