Is “leave a Telegram group now, get a way back later” useful - or just an overengineered bookmark?

Sometimes I want to leave a Telegram group for a while - not just mute or archive it - but still have a deliberate way back later. I built a small open-source Telegram bot to test whether this is a real need or just my own unusual workflow.

How it works

The basic flow is:

• In a private chat with the bot, you choose a group and how long you want to stay away.
• You leave the group yourself.
• At the scheduled time, the bot sends you a way back.

For a public group, it sends the group’s current public link after checking that the username still belongs to the same group. This mode does not require help from a group administrator.

For a private group, an administrator must add the bot to the group, make it an administrator, and grant it only the “Invite Users” permission. The bot checks this when the return is scheduled and again before creating the private invitation. If the user never actually left the group, no invitation is sent.

Visibility options

There are also two visibility options:

• Hidden Return - not displayed in /status. The real group name is still shown when the return becomes available.
• Visible Return - displayed in /status with the current group name and a “Return now” button.

Privacy and source code

I tried to minimize the data stored by the hosted bot. It needs encrypted Telegram user and chat IDs, the return time and scheduling state, plus an encrypted public username when a public link is required. It does not persist group names, descriptions, avatars, messages, Telegram profile names, invitation links, or completed-return history.

The code is available under Apache-2.0, and the hosted version has a separate privacy policy.

Questions

What I would genuinely like to understand:

• Is the idea and the flow clear? Can you imagine using this, or is muting, archiving or bookmarking a group already enough?
• Would you trust a hosted Telegram bot with this task? What privacy or security concern have I missed? Does open-source code and a detailed privacy policy meaningfully increase trust when users still cannot directly verify what code the hosted instance is running?
• Is Hidden Return useful, or does it add unnecessary complexity?
• Would granting the bot the “Invite Users” administrator permission be a dealbreaker, even if no other administrator permissions are requested?
• Does the public-group mode have value without administrator involvement, or is it effectively just an overly complicated reminder/bookmark?

Languages

The interface currently supports English, Russian, Spanish, French, Simplified Chinese, Arabic and Hindi. Several translations were machine-generated and have not yet been reviewed by native speakers. If you speak one of these languages, I would appreciate feedback on anything unnatural or misleading. Is there another language that would be especially important to add?

I am especially interested in skeptical answers and reasons not to use it. I would rather discover that the premise is weak now than turn this into a promotional launch.

Disclosure

I built and operate the bot. It is RejoinLaterBot.