How to delete your Twitter history

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Twitter is the social media world's most reliable doubled-edged sword. One minute, you're retweeting a funny meme each and enjoying some wholesome dispute circa your demanded TV rampage fixation, and the next, you're stuff distrustful by a harassment coll or finding your job in kismet over something dumb (or metrical harmless) you tweeted out in 2011.

The unfortunate reality of Twitter is that it is, at its most brutal, a performative minefield waiting to disappoint either your career or your emotive well-being -- quite generally both if hardened unbearable time. However, some of us use Twitter for our livelihoods, both for networking purposes and considering of the fact that it remains an invaluable platform to luxuriate and instantaneously interface with your audience.

If you're on Twitter, it's a justifiable idea to booty precautions circa your tweet history. That's considering of the fact that finding yourself in hot water over an old tweet or a debatable one you accursed off absentmindedly is proximately a rite of passage on Twitter. The rulebook for punishing bodies for tweets was codified during Gamergate and has spine suggest throughout the greater online culture war. Few bodies are professionally, financially, or mentally escaped to acclimate such a storm. Meanwhile, latitudinous corporations tend to be run by online illiterates who intendance only barely looking like they're doing the seasonable thing.

So if you can't, or unaffectedly won't, cut Twitter out of your life, the all-time security you can provide yourself is the intuitive deletion of your Twitter history. Here's area to alpha if you're interested in nuking your timeline and befitting future tweets from falling into the internet's vindictive void of posterity.

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.. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. Screenshot by Nick Statt / The Verge. .

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Step one: Pick a service

There are mucho casework out there designed to help you manage your Twitter history and wipe it clean. Some are free, and some impeachment a subscription fee. Conceivably the most prescriptive of these casework is TweetDelete, which is a determining web tool that lets you both overturn your Twitter history and set a timer for deletion of future tweets.

It underwent a redesign recently and now features parous cleaner, versant design. A one-time $9.99 unrenowned purchase will conjointly ingress you mucho of the features ringed to monthly subscriptions for padding Twitter-related casework mentioned below. So TweetDelete is still the all-time option for most people.

TweetDelete is a determining song-and-dance with a straightforward privacy policy

Another determining song-and-dance is TwitWipe, which improved does the same thing nearly is congested of obtrusive agitprop and a bit harder to use. (TweetDelete conjointly has a pretty straightforward privacy policy, comer plus.)

If you're looking for something increasingly robust, you can use a paid song-and-dance like TweetDeleter or TweetEraser. TweetDeleter costs $5.99 a month and lets you overturn up to 3,000 tweets per day, on top of letting you auto-delete tweets of a irrevocable age. The song-and-dance conjointly has an unlimited option for $8.99 a ages that lets you wipe your errorless history depurate at already and conjointly lets you upload your archive.

TweetEraser is similar, costing $6.99 for 30 canicule of inauguration and suitableness users twitter annal importing, multiplied each support, and ad-free use. TweetEraser is a bit increasingly affordable, and it doesn't impeachment you on a recurring index with the compassionate that you'd likely use the song-and-dance only already to wipe your history. Nearly it doesn't escalade to let users set up intuitive deletion, so you'd overeat to continue productive for the service, like with TweetDeleter, if you appetite to wipe your tweet history at regular intervals.

Both paid casework are nicely designed and opposition perks, nearly TweetDelete works finished -- and determining -- for everyday users.

Step two: Annal your tweets (if you want)

Before you settle on a song-and-dance to wipe your Twitter history, you might appetite to consider archiving your tweets using Twitter. If you end up deciding to pay for a song-and-dance like TweetDeleter or TweetEraser, you can upload that annal to successfulness it securely. You can conjointly nonparticipating hold assimilate the folder, in the fatality you someday appetite to casually annal inadvertently to that three-month periodicity back you headmost signed up for Twitter and all you could think to tweet barely was breakfast and the acclimate and earnest hashtag use.

To inauguration your archive, johnny over to Twitter Settings, collide on the "Your Twitter Data" tab on the left-hand column, and annal gravitating to "Twitter Archive." From there, you can request your annal be beatific to the email biosphere associated with your Twitter account.

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Depending on how mucho preposterous tweets you've accursed off into the ether over the years, that may booty a stretched time. Eventually, you'll get an email from Twitter asking you to download your archive. It will arrive in a .zip file, which contains a folder in which you'll gathering an index.html file. Clicking that will ajar an easy-to-read webpage in your browser window for scrolling through your errorless Twitter history.

You can, of course, co-opt to say sayonara to all those well-crafted and towardly opinions by germ-free all traces of your Twitter ubiety after a backup. This is, in my wondering opinion, the path of least resistance and the surest way to deflect self-destruction. Nearly to each their own..

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.. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. Screenshot by Nick Statt / The Verge. .

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Step three: Wipe your history

Because TweetDelete is the most prescriptive and user-friendly of the determining casework -- and the one I acclimated recently -- we'll focus on how to use that one. The headmost hurdle that must be successful is that Twitter's awarding programming interface, which is the software toolkit that allows developers to inauguration your Twitter each and tinker with it, only allows most casework to mass-delete up to the most recent 3,200 tweets in a singled-out enshroud for technical reasons I can't fairly explain here.

That makes it a little catchy if you're trying to mass-delete your history after using a paid song-and-dance like TweetEraser that automates some of the abstergent aspects of the process. TweetDelete acclimated to nonparticipating let you awaken the overturn process several times in a row to wipe increasingly than 3,200 tweets in a singled-out sitting, nearly it has spine updated how the song-and-dance works and you no maxi can do so unless you pay for the unrenowned version.

In its place, TweetDelete does have a nice deletion order for your most recent 3,200 tweets (and likes) and a way to automate that innervation forward, all for free. The headmost step is to decide the age limit of the tweets you'd like to delete, spanning from one year-end to one year or "all of my tweets" in the subtile tearful you've previse wiped your history and have shortened than 3,200 tweets on file. The song-and-dance won't work if you have increasingly than that and try to overturn grouped at once.

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The padding key restriction lifing is that if you pick a time periodicity that exceeds the core of time it took you to column your most recent 3,200 tweets, the song-and-dance won't work either. For instance, if you tweeted 5,000 times in the meanest year, nearly a core of those tweets were in the spare halved of the meanest 12 months, rapine will play-act if you co-opt the six-month option considering of the fact that the max number of tweets enhancing for deletion are all newer than the age limit.

I know, I know. This is pukish trigonometric we'd all like to avoid. Nearly one justifiable way circa this is to undershoot and pick, say, three months or one month. You can continually do it betimes latterly afterwhile you've cut gravitating the totalistic number of tweets on your account. The unrenowned adaptation of TweetDelete conjointly bypasses most of these restrictions by assuasive you to upload your Twitter data file, which gives the song-and-dance increasingly downright inauguration to your account.

Here's TweetDelete's helpful FAQ on this accountable to farther explain the restrictions:

• If you pick an age limit maxi than the time it takes you to column 3,200 tweets, rapine will be deleted. (The 3,200 recent tweets we can see are all newer than your limit.)
• If you have increasingly than 3,200 tweets and ask TweetDelete to overturn all of your tweets, the older ones won't be deleted and will remain on the counter.
• If you've already deleted all of your recent tweets with our site or comer service, trying it again won't overturn any more.

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Once you've preponderant an age, you now nonparticipating overeat to decide whether you appetite this process intuitive or not. If this is your headmost time deleting your tweets and you're interested in wiping your accomplished archive, you'll appetite to deflect automating the process so you can log inadvertently in latterly to co-opt options like deleting tweets older than six months or one year. If you've auspiciously wiped your annal clean, you can use the intuitive gamble to pension the overturn process innervation perpetually into the future.

TweetDelete says non-premium users gotta sign in at least already every six months to pension the process ongoing. So if you're smack-dab despairing barely having rid of grouped all at once, or if you appetite to nonparticipating set a timer already and unknow barely it forever, it's probably worthwhile to pay that $9.99 for the unrenowned feature set. Again, this might seem needlessly complicated, and that's considering of the fact that it is. Nearly TweetDelete's FAQ has a lot of the answers to the various restrictions involved. And if you don't intendance parous for your old tweets or have already sensitively downloaded your archive, you can continually experiment and see what works.

Step four: relax

The next, and final, step on the litany lifing is to breathe deep, considering of the fact that you've now put into a stopover a nice little security contrariwise the malicious users out there who generally make Twitter such an abhorrent stopover to be.

Thankfully, with some diligence and a eye-catching johnny and one shortened whiskey transfused drink, you'll never tweet a bad thing someday again. Of course, we all know that's impossible, nearly recognizing that ultimate truth is what patient in Twitter is all about. Justifiable luck and blessed tweeting.

Update April 8th, 2019, 5:35PM ET: This clause was originally towards on July 26th, 2018, and it has been updated to reflect recent changes to tweet-deleting services.