How to download a backup copy of your Twitter data (or deactivate your account)

Huge improvements are underway at Twitter as we speak—including new leadership—and some persons are anxious about what the upcoming may well convey for the social network. Points may perhaps close up absolutely fine, but even in tranquil times, it’s good to know how to get a copy of your Twitter info for area safekeeping—or to deactivate your Twitter account if you choose. This puts command of your facts in your arms.

Ahead of we commence, it is really significant to know that the process of obtaining a copy of your Twitter knowledge can get 24 hours or far more. Twitter does this each for basic safety explanations and ostensibly to give its servers time to acquire the in depth facts it will mail you.

Also, you may need to have an e-mail tackle or cellular phone selection registered to your Twitter account so the web-site can ship you a distinctive confirmation code to full the system. When you have the info, you can expect to get a community duplicate of all of your tweets that you can store indefinitely without the need of needing to log in to Twitter.

How to request your Twitter data on desktop or mobile

To get a duplicate of your Twitter data, you first need to entire a request course of action. To get started, log in to Twitter.com or open up the Twitter application using the account for which you’d like to ask for an archive.

If you are on the Twitter website, click “Extra” in the sidebar, then click “Configurations and Guidance.” On the mobile Twitter app, just tap “Settings and Support” in the sidebar. When that menu expands, click or tap “Options and Privacy.”

Less than “Configurations,” select “Your account,” then simply click or tap “Down load an archive of your knowledge.”

Following verifying your password, Twitter will deliver a verification code to both your e-mail deal with or a mobile cell phone selection through a textual content concept, dependent on what you select.

Just after you get the code, kind it into Twitter, and you will be back again on the “Download an archive of your knowledge” webpage. Beneath “Twitter information,” simply click the “Request archive” button.

Twitter will start getting ready your archive, which can get 24 several hours or far more to entire.

When the archive is completely ready, you can get a notification via e-mail and/or a pop-up notification in the Twitter application. On the Twitter web page or in the app, navigate to “Options and privateness” > “Your account” > “Download an archive of your data” to obtain the ZIP file that consists of your info.

What’s in the Twitter details you get?

At the time you have downloaded the ZIP file, extract it into a folder on a Laptop, Mac, or Linux. In that folder, you can open “Your archive.html” in a conventional internet browser and appear via your Twitter facts locally, which is now hosted on your laptop or computer in that folder.

The Twitter account data you can obtain comes as a ZIP file, viewable in a area website browser on a Computer or Mac, which involves your tweets and immediate messages, account details and record, applications and products you’ve utilised, accounts you’ve got blocked or muted, and advertising profile data.

A note about immediate messages

From our experimentation, we have seen that Twitter direct messages (DMs) will be retained in Twitter’s servers as long as one particular man or woman in the chat does not delete them. So even if you delete your DM background with a individual, the other person you chatted with will nevertheless have a duplicate of your shared DM historical past. But if both of those people in the DM chat delete the immediate message conversation, it disappears from your Twitter archive (and very likely from Twitter’s servers) eternally. So if you have sensitive DMs you’d like to erase, question the other celebration to delete their DM chat background with you as nicely.

How to deactivate your Twitter account

If you’ve already downloaded your Twitter data and sense like you’re completely ready to consider the much more spectacular move of deactivating or deleting your account, then log in to Twitter.com or open up the Twitter application applying the account you would like to deactivate.

Employing the sidebar, navigate to “Configurations and privacy” > “Your account” > “Deactivate your account.” On that website page, you will see a handful of disclaimers about how deactivation will work, but they aren’t distinct about deletion. Consulting Twitter’s guidance pages reveals additional detail about the method: Deactivation can be reversed for up to 30 times. Following that, your Twitter account and all affiliated knowledge will be permanently deleted.

If you’re completely ready, click on “Deactivate.”

Even following clicking “Deactivate,” you are going to need to have to enter your Twitter password and go through yet another confirmation prompt.

When total, your Twitter account will deactivate, and your tweets will disappear from the web-site within just a couple minutes. If you modify your mind, log in again in just 30 times and your account will reactivate. But if you you should not log in again within 30 days, your account will be deleted eternally.