The idea of deleting Twitter and absconding into the woods continues to grow in appeal with each passing day. Yet even considering the sustained psychic damage this wretched hellsite continues to inflict upon us, it’s difficult to simply let go and wipe away years of memes and hot takes. You worked hard on those jokes, after all.
Fortunately, leaving Twitter doesn’t mean you have to delete all your tweets for good. Twitter lets you download an archive of your data, meaning you can keep a record of all your old posts for your own private joy and amusement even after you leave.
Here’s how to download your tweet archive:
- Open Twitter.
- If you’re on desktop, click on “More…” in the navigation bar on the left to reveal more options. If you’re on mobile, open the navigation bar by tapping on your profile picture in the top left corner.
- Click or tap on “Settings and privacy” in the navigation bar.
- Click or tap on “Your account.”
- Click or tap on “Download an archive of your data.”
- Twitter will ask you to verify your password. Enter it and click or tap “Next.”
- Twitter will then ask whether it should send a verification code to your email address or phone number. Select whichever one you prefer.
- Once you’ve received the verification code via your chosen method, enter it and click or tap “Next.”
- Click or tap “Request archive.”
- Wait to receive a notification for when the ZIP file of your Twitter archive is ready for download. It can take up to 24 hours for the file to be ready, at which point you will receive either a push notification on the mobile app or an email to your connected account.
Of course, downloading your archive of Twitter data won’t delete your account — you’ll have to do that separately. But it might make the decision to do so feel a bit easier.