Hi,
We just wanted to let you all know that @EchteEldin & @BomJacob have been promoted to maintainers of the ptb project.
Both of them showed a major commitment & dedication to the project and have contributed a lot of their knowledge and experience. We were always happy to have them as part of the dev team, so we can only be delighted to have them as part of the maintainers.

@BomJacob & @EchteEldin - congratulations!

We just released v8.0.0!

TL;DR
- We wish to thank everyone who had contributed to this major release. If for some reason your name is not in AUTHORS.rst please don't be shy and send us a PR to add your name.

- As always, upgrade using
pip install python-telegram-bot -U

New features:

- Fully support Bot Api 3.3 (PR #806).
- DispatcherHandlerStop (see docs).
- Regression fix for text_html & text_markdown (PR #777).
- Added effective_attachment to message (PR #766).

Non backward compatible changes:

- Removed Botan support from the library (PR #776).
- Fully support Bot Api 3.3 (PR #806).
- Remove de_json() (PR #789).

Changes:

- Sane defaults for tcp socket options on linux (PR #754).
- Add RESTRICTED as constant to ChatMember (PR #761).
- Add rich comparison to CallbackQuery (PR #764).
- Fix get_game_high_scores (PR #771).
- Warn on small con_pool_size during custom initalization of Updater (PR #793).
- Catch exceptions in error handler for errors that happen during polling (PR #810).
- For testing we switched to pytest (PR #788).
- Lot's of small improvements to our tests and documentation.

We've just released v8.1.0!

TL;DR
Upgrade to get Bot API 3.4 support.

- As always, upgrade using
pip install python-telegram-bot -U


Changes:
New features
- Support Bot API 3.4 (PR #865).

Changes
- MessgaeHandler & RegexHandler now consider channel_updates.
- Fix command not recognized if it is directly followed by a newline (PR #869).
- Removed Bot._message_wrapper (PR #822).
- Unitests are now also running on Appveyor (Windows VM).
- Various unitest improvments.
- Documentation fixes.

We wish to thank everyone who had contributed to this release. Happy upgrades everyone!

We've just release v8.1.1!

TL;DR
Thanks for bringing a small error in our improve commandhandler to our attention. This is a hotfix for the risen problems with single character messages and the CommandHandler

- As always, upgrade using
pip install python-telegram-bot -U

Changes:
Fix Commandhandler crashing on single character messages (PR #873)

We wish to thank everyone who had contributed to this release. Happy upgrades everyone!

We've just released v9.0.0!

TL;DR
Upgrade to get Bot API 3.5 support.
Drop support for python v3.3

- As always, upgrade using
pip install python-telegram-bot -U

Breaking changes (possibly)
- Drop support for python 3.3 (PR #930)
Python 3.3 has reached End Of Life status.

New Features
- Support Bot API 3.5 (PR #920)
NOTE: Because a major rework of some internals for the library is needed to support the upload of new files with send_media_group this is currently not yet available. For now you can use file_id's or url's for media to send in a media group.

Changes
- Fix race condition in dispatcher start/stop (#887)
- Log error trace if there is no error handler registered (#694)
- Update examples with consistent string formatting (#870)
- Various changes and improvements to the docs.

We wish to thank everyone who had contributed to this release. Happy upgrades everyone!

We've just released v10.0.0!

TL;DR
Stability fixes
Bot API v3.6
Removed deprecated APIs

- As always, upgrade using pip install python-telegram-bot -U


Non backward compatabile changes and changed defaults

- JobQueue: Remove deprecated prevent_autostart & put() (PR #1012)
- Bot, Updater: Remove deprecated network_delay (PR #1012)
- Remove deprecated Message.new_chat_member (PR #1012)
- Retry bootstrap phase indefinitely (by default) on network errors (PR #1018)

New Features

- Support v3.6 API (PR #1006)
- User.full_name convinience property (PR #949)
- Add send_phone_number_to_provider and send_email_to_provider arguments to send_invoice (PR #986)
- Bot: Add shortcut methods reply_{markdown,html} (PR #827)
- Bot: Add shortcut method reply_media_group (PR #994)
- Added utils.helpers.effective_message_type (PR #826)
- Bot.get_file now allows passing a file in addition to file_id (PR #963)
- Add .get_file() to Audio, Document, PhotoSize, Sticker, Video, VideoNote and Voice (PR #963)
- Add .send_*() methods to User and Chat (PR #963)
- Get jobs by name (PR #1011)
- Add Message caption html/markdown methods (PR #1013)
- File.download_as_bytearray - new method to get a d/led file as bytearray (PR #1019)
- File.download(): Now returns a meaningful return value (PR #1019)
- Added conversation timeout in ConversationHandler (PR #895)

Changes

- Store bot in PreCheckoutQuery (PR #953)
- Updater: Issue INFO log upon received signal (PR #951)
- JobQueue: Thread safety fixes (PR #977)
- WebhookHandler: Fix exception thrown during error handling (PR #985)
- Explicitly check update.effective_chat in ConversationHandler.check_update (PR #959)
- Updater: Better handling of timeouts during get_updates (PR #1007)
- Remove unnecessary to_dict() (PR #834)
- CommandHandler - ignore strings in entities and "/" followed by whitespace (PR #1020)
- Documentation & style fixes (PR #942, PR #956, PR #962, PR #980, PR #983)
- Many contributors for this version, some of them for the first time, thank you all! (appologies if some1 had been forgotten):


Daniel Reed <nmlorg@gmail.com>
Eldinnie <Eldinnie@users.noreply.github.com>
Evgen <evgfilim1@yandex.ru>
graynk <gray.nk@gmail.com>
Jacob Bom <bomjacob@gmail.com>
Jannik <32801117+code1mountain@users.noreply.github.com>
Joscha Götzer <joscha.goetzer@gmail.com>
Mischa Krüger <makmanx64@gmail.com>
Noam Meltzer <tsnoam@gmail.com>
Oleg <fmorte@ya.ru>
Paul Larsen <pn1315@ic.ac.uk>
Willem <github@canihavesome.coffee>

We've just released v10.0.1!

TL;DR
Fixed an error on the new ConversationHandler timout argument.

- As always, upgrade using pip install python-telegram-bot -U

Fixes:

- Fix conversationhandler timeout (PR #1032)
- Add missing docs utils (PR #912)

We've just released v10.0.2!

As always, upgrade using pip install python-telegram-bot -U

Important fix:
- Handle utf8 decoding errors (#1076)

New features:
- Added Filter.regex (#1028)
- Filters for Category and file types (#1046)
- Added video note filter (#1067)

Fixes:
- Fix in telegram.Message (#1042)
- Make chat_id a positional argument inside shortcut methods of Chat and User classes (#1050)
- Make Bot.full_name return a unicode object. (#1063)
- CommandHandler faster check (#1074)
- Correct documentation of Dispatcher.add_handler (#1071)
- Various small fixes to documentation.

We wish to thank everyone who had contributed to this release. Happy upgrades everyone!

We've just released v10.1.0!

As always, upgrade using pip install -U python-telegram-bot

Fixes changing previous behaviour:

- Add urllib3 fix for socks5h support (#1085)
- Fix send_sticker() timeout=20 (#1088)

Fixes:

- Add a caption_entity filter for filtering caption entities (#1068)
- Inputfile encode filenames (#1086)
- InputFile: Fix proper naming of file when reading from subprocess.PIPE (#1079)
- Remove pytest-catchlog from requirements (#1099)
- Documentation fixes (#1061, #1078, #1081, #1096)

We wish to thank everyone who had contributed to this release. Happy upgrades everyone!

We've just released v11.0.0!

As always, upgrade using pip install -U python-telegram-bot

This update brings full support for Bot API 4.0!
We are working as hard as we can on Bot API 4.1, expect it soon!

Add full support for telegram passport (#1174):
- New types: PassportData, PassportFile, EncryptedPassportElement, EncryptedCredentials, PassportElementError, PassportElementErrorDataField, PassportElementErrorFrontSide, PassportElementErrorReverseSide, PassportElementErrorSelfie, PassportElementErrorFile and PassportElementErrorFiles.
- New bot method: set_passport_data_errors
- New filter: Filters.passport_data
- Field passport_data field on Message
- PassportData can be easily decrypted.
- PassportFiles are automatically decrypted if originating from decrypted PassportData.
- See new passportbot.py example for details on how to use, or go to our telegram passport wiki page for more info
NOTE: Passport decryption requires new dependency cryptography.

Change how Inputfile is handled internally (#1184):
- This allows support for specifying the thumbnails of photos and videos using the thumb= argument in the different send_ methods.
- Also allows Bot.send_media_group to actually finally send more than one media.
- Add thumb to Audio, Video and Videonote
- Add Bot.edit_message_media together with InputMediaAnimation, InputMediaAudio, and inputMediaDocument.

Other Bot API 4.0 changes:
- Add forusquare_type to Venue, InlineQueryResultVenue, InputVenueMessageContent, and Bot.send_venue. (#1170)
- Add vCard support by adding vcard field to Contact, InlineQueryResultContact, InputContactMessageContent, and Bot.send_contact. (#1166)
- Support new message entities: CASHTAG and PHONE_NUMBER. (#1179)
- Add Bot.send_animation, add width, height, and duration to Animation, and add Filters.animation. (#1172)

Non Bot API 4.0 changes:
- Minor integer comparison fix (#1147)
- Fix Filters.regex failing on non-text message (#1158)
- Fix ProcessLookupError if process finishes before we kill it (#1126)
- Add t.me links for User, Chat and Message if available and update User.mention_* (#1092)
- Fix mention_markdown/html on py2 (#1112)

We wish to thank everyone who had contributed to this release. Happy upgrades everyone!

We've just released v11.1.0!

As always, upgrade using pip install -U python-telegram-bot

This update contains fixes and updates for Telegram Passport: (#1198)

- Fix passport decryption failing at random times
- Added support for middle names.
- Added support for translations for documents
- Add errors for translations for documents
- Added support for requesting names in the language of the user's country of residence
- Replaced the payload parameter with the new parameter nonce
- Add hash to EncryptedPassportElement

The wiki page for Telegram Passport has also been updated to reflect the changes :)

Happy upgrades everyone!

Hi, We're trying to get a picture of the number of users that use pypy in combination with python-telegram-bot. We're considering dropping support, but don't want to when we have a significant number of users that use PTB on pypy. So please vote below so w
anonymous poll

I don't use pypy with ptb – 518
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍 82%

I use pypy with PTB – 114
👍👍 18%

👥 632 people voted so far.

Well... This felt like decades. But here we are with a new release: V12.0.0 !!!

Expect minor releases soon (mainly complete Bot API 4.4 support)

We're delighted to have 3 new developers in our team:
@BiboJoshi , @Poolitzer & @Nukesor
Some of them had already contributed to this release.

As usual, upgrade using: pip install -U python-telegram-bot

Major and/or breaking changes:

- Context based callbacks
- Persistence
- PrefixHandler added (Handler overhaul)
- Deprecation of RegexHandler and edited_messages, channel_post, etc. arguments (Filter overhaul)
- Various ConversationHandler changes and fixes
- Bot API 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 support
- Python 3.4 is no longer supported
- Error Handler now handles all types of exceptions
- Return UTC from from_timestamp()

See the wiki page at https://git.io/fxJuV for a detailed guide on how to migrate from version 11 to version 12.

See the CHANGES.rst file on our github page for more details.

As promised, we bring you API 4.4 support!

We've just released v12.1.0
Thanks for anyone who've contributed to this release.

As usual upgrade using pip install -U python-telegram-bot

Major changes:

* Bot API 4.4 support (#1464, #1510)
* Add get_file method to Animation & ChatPhoto. Add get_small_file & get_big_file methods to ChatPhoto (#1489)
* Tools for deep linking (#1049)

Minor changes and/or bug fixes:

* Documentation fixes (#1500, #1499)
* Improved examples (#1502)

We've just released v12.1.1

This is an hotfix release for #1517

As usual upgrade using pip install -U python-telegram-bot

We've just released v12.2.0
Thanks for anyone who've contributed to this release.

As usual upgrade using pip install -U python-telegram-bot

New features:

- Nested ConversationHandlers (#1512).

Minor changes, CI improvments or bug fixes:

- Fix CI failures due to non-backward compat attrs depndency (#1540).
- travis.yaml: TEST_OFFICIAL removed from allowed_failures.
- Fix typos in examples (#1537).
- Fix Bot.to_dict to use proper first_name (#1525).
- Refactor test_commandhandler.py (#1408).
- Add Python 3.8 (RC version) to Travis testing matrix (#1543).
- test_bot.py: Add to_dict test (#1544).
- Flake config moved into setup.cfg (#1546).