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

Huge changes are underway at Twitter as we speak—including new leadership—and some people today are anxious about what the upcoming could possibly provide for the social community. Issues may well stop up totally wonderful, but even in tranquil periods, it is superior to know how to get a copy of your Twitter information for nearby safekeeping—or to deactivate your Twitter account if you decide on. This puts control of your data in your hands.

Just before we get started, it’s crucial to know that the approach of receiving a copy of your Twitter facts can choose 24 several hours or a lot more. Twitter does this equally for safety explanations and ostensibly to give its servers time to assemble the thorough knowledge it will ship you.

Also, you are going to have to have an electronic mail tackle or cell mobile phone range registered to your Twitter account so the web-site can deliver you a distinctive affirmation code to finish the process. As soon as you have the knowledge, you can expect to get a regional copy of all of your tweets that you can shop indefinitely devoid of needing to log in to Twitter.

How to ask for your Twitter information on desktop or mobile

To get a copy of your Twitter details, you initial need to complete a ask for procedure. To get started off, log in to Twitter.com or open the Twitter application making use of the account for which you’d like to request an archive.

If you are on the Twitter internet site, click on “Extra” in the sidebar, then click on “Configurations and Aid.” On the mobile Twitter application, just tap “Options and Support” in the sidebar. When that menu expands, click on or faucet “Options and Privateness.”

Less than “Configurations,” decide on “Your account,” then click or tap “Download an archive of your facts.”

Right after verifying your password, Twitter will send a verification code to both your e mail handle or a mobile cellphone amount as a result of a text information, based on what you select.

Immediately after you get the code, sort it into Twitter, and you can expect to be again on the “Obtain an archive of your facts” web site. Under “Twitter knowledge,” click on the “Request archive” button.

Twitter will begin getting ready your archive, which can just take 24 hrs or far more to finish.

When the archive is completely ready, you can get a notification by using e mail and/or a pop-up notification in the Twitter application. On the Twitter web site or in the app, navigate to “Settings and privateness” > “Your account” > “Obtain an archive of your facts” to download the ZIP file that incorporates your facts.

What is in the Twitter knowledge you get?

As soon as you have downloaded the ZIP file, extract it into a folder on a Laptop, Mac, or Linux. In that folder, you can open up “Your archive.html” in a normal net browser and search as a result of your Twitter data locally, which is now hosted on your computer in that folder.

The Twitter account facts you can obtain comes as a ZIP file, viewable in a neighborhood internet browser on a Pc or Mac, which involves your tweets and direct messages, account information and heritage, apps and gadgets you’ve got employed, accounts you’ve got blocked or muted, and marketing profile facts.

A notice about immediate messages

From our experimentation, we have observed that Twitter immediate messages (DMs) will be retained in Twitter’s servers as prolonged as a single person in the chat does not delete them. So even if you delete your DM heritage with a person, the other person you chatted with will nevertheless have a copy of your shared DM record. But if both people in the DM chat delete the immediate information discussion, it disappears from your Twitter archive (and probably from Twitter’s servers) permanently. So if you have delicate DMs you would like to erase, inquire the other celebration to delete their DM chat background with you as very well.

How to deactivate your Twitter account

If you’ve previously downloaded your Twitter knowledge and come to feel like you might be all set to take the additional dramatic stage of deactivating or deleting your account, then log in to Twitter.com or open up the Twitter application using the account you would like to deactivate.

Working with the sidebar, navigate to “Settings and privateness” > “Your account” > “Deactivate your account.” On that website page, you may see a number of disclaimers about how deactivation works, but they aren’t crystal clear about deletion. Consulting Twitter’s guidance pages reveals more depth about the procedure: Deactivation can be reversed for up to 30 times. Immediately after that, your Twitter account and all connected knowledge will be completely deleted.

If you might be completely ready, click “Deactivate.”

Even right after clicking “Deactivate,” you will want to enter your Twitter password and go through another affirmation prompt.

When finish, your Twitter account will deactivate, and your tweets will disappear from the web-site in just a handful of minutes. If you change your mind, log in again inside of 30 days and your account will reactivate. But if you you should not log in again inside 30 times, your account will be deleted forever.