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

Huge adjustments are underway at Twitter as we speak—including new leadership—and some persons are nervous about what the future may possibly convey for the social network. Things may possibly finish up absolutely high-quality, but even in tranquil periods, it really is great to know how to get a copy of your Twitter facts for area safekeeping—or to deactivate your Twitter account if you decide on. This places management of your information in your hands.

Just before we begin, it is really essential to know that the course of action of receiving a duplicate of your Twitter info can choose 24 hrs or much more. Twitter does this both equally for security good reasons and ostensibly to give its servers time to get the in-depth knowledge it will send you.

Also, you can expect to will need an electronic mail address or mobile cellular phone number registered to your Twitter account so the internet site can deliver you a particular affirmation code to comprehensive the course of action. Once you have the info, you may get a regional duplicate of all of your tweets that you can shop indefinitely devoid of needing to log in to Twitter.

How to request your Twitter facts on desktop or cell

To get a duplicate of your Twitter info, you initially will need to total a request approach. To get started off, log in to Twitter.com or open the Twitter app utilizing the account for which you would like to request an archive.

If you are on the Twitter web-site, simply click “Far more” in the sidebar, then click on “Options and Assist.” On the mobile Twitter application, just tap “Configurations and Help” in the sidebar. When that menu expands, simply click or tap “Configurations and Privateness.”

Under “Settings,” pick “Your account,” then simply click or faucet “Down load an archive of your information.”

Right after verifying your password, Twitter will send out a verification code to both your email address or a cellular cellphone quantity via a textual content message, depending on what you decide on.

Immediately after you get the code, kind it into Twitter, and you will be again on the “Down load an archive of your knowledge” web page. Below “Twitter facts,” simply click the “Request archive” button.

Twitter will begin preparing your archive, which can get 24 hrs or additional to comprehensive.

When the archive is ready, you can get a notification by way of e-mail and/or a pop-up notification in the Twitter app. On the Twitter internet site or in the app, navigate to “Configurations and privateness” > “Your account” > “Obtain an archive of your data” to download the ZIP file that incorporates your info.

What is in the Twitter facts you get?

After you have downloaded the ZIP file, extract it into a folder on a Personal computer, Mac, or Linux. In that folder, you can open up “Your archive.html” in a normal net browser and glimpse via your Twitter data domestically, which is now hosted on your pc in that folder.

The Twitter account data you can obtain arrives as a ZIP file, viewable in a community web browser on a Personal computer or Mac, which contains your tweets and immediate messages, account details and history, apps and products you’ve made use of, accounts you’ve blocked or muted, and promotion profile information.

A take note about immediate messages

From our experimentation, we’ve noticed that Twitter immediate messages (DMs) will be retained in Twitter’s servers as long as a person human being in the chat does not delete them. So even if you delete your DM record with a human being, the other particular person you chatted with will however have a duplicate of your shared DM historical past. But if both people today in the DM chat delete the immediate concept discussion, 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, talk to the other bash to delete their DM chat heritage with you as nicely.

How to deactivate your Twitter account

If you’ve got previously downloaded your Twitter data and truly feel like you might be all set to acquire the far more remarkable move of deactivating or deleting your account, then log in to Twitter.com or open the Twitter app employing the account you’d like to deactivate.

Employing the sidebar, navigate to “Settings and privateness” > “Your account” > “Deactivate your account.” On that website page, you can expect to see a couple of disclaimers about how deactivation is effective, but they are not clear about deletion. Consulting Twitter’s assistance internet pages reveals more depth about the method: Deactivation can be reversed for up to 30 times. After that, your Twitter account and all connected information will be forever deleted.

If you happen to be completely ready, click on “Deactivate.”

Even just after clicking “Deactivate,” you will need to enter your Twitter password and go by another affirmation prompt.

When entire, your Twitter account will deactivate, and your tweets will disappear from the web site inside a handful of minutes. If you change your head, log in once again in just 30 days and your account will reactivate. But if you really don’t log in once again within just 30 times, your account will be deleted eternally.