Photo: Ink Drop (Shutterstock)
Planning to leave Twitter? It’s not a bad idea. But before you start to delete your Twitter account, do yourself a favor and download your tweets for yourself. Fortunately, Twitter does a good job of making it fairly easy. Instead of a text file, you’ll get a zip file that can open an interactive archive of all your Twitter data. You’ll be able to browse and search all your tweets, likes, interactions, and more.
How to download your Twitter archive data
To get started, log in to your Twitter account on the web, and from the sidebar, click More. Go to Settings and Support > Settings and Privacy. On the Settings page, select Your Account > Download an Archive Of Your Data. Enter your password and verify your identity using the code sent via email or text message. After that, you’ll land on a page called Download an archive of your data. Click “Request Archive,” and Twitter will start to gather all your data and create that interactive archive for you. According to Twitter, this process can take up to 24 hours.
Once the package is ready, you’ll get an email or app notification. Then, navigate to Settings and privacy > Your account > Download an archive of your data to download the zip file.
After downloading the zip, extract it on your Mac or PC. In the folder, open the file called “Your archive.html.” This file will open in your default browser, and you’ll be able to peruse all your tweets, likes, and direct messages using the sidebar on the left. Even though the archive will open in your browser, all the data will be hosted locally on your computer. Consider uploading it to Google Drive or iCloud, then you can deactivate your Twitter account.
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[Ars Technica]
