Is Your Twitter Embarrassing? Here’s How to Delete All Your Old Tweets

Twitter will apparently shortly belong to Elon Musk, and maybe you’re thinking about leaving the platform for a bit (or even permanently). You can do this by deactivating or deleting your account, but there’s also another way to get rid of your digital footprint, without nuking the whole thing — just delete your tweets.

Twitter’s popularity bloomed in the late aughts, when many millennials were still in the MySpace mindset — sharing vague sad statuses for attention, angsty song lyrics and selfies in a dirty bathroom mirror. And even if you’re not a millennial, chances are your tweet history contains some embarrassing gems nevertheless. After all, Twitter has been around for well over a decade now, and if you scroll back long enough, you never know what you’ll find.

If the thought of someone finding your cringe-worthy Twitter origins keeps you up at night — or if you just promised yourself that you’d clean up your act once and for all this year, don’t worry. There are several ways to wipe your past from the annals of Twitter. Keep in mind if you use one of these apps, deleting your tweets is permanent and unless you subscribe to a premium tier, the service will usually limit you to deleting 3,200 tweets. We’ll tell you how.

TweetDelete: Mass delete tweets using age and keyword filters

TweetDelete is a free web tool that lets you mass delete your Twitter posts with age and text filters. You can also set the tool up to mass delete on a schedule. Here’s how to get started with TweetDelete:

1. Visit tweetdelete.net.

2. Sign in with Twitter.

3. Read application permissions, privacy settings, T&C.

4. Authorize app.

From there, you can delete up to 3,200 of your most recent tweets with some limitations. There are drop-down menu options to delete tweets older than one week, three months, a year and more. If you’re looking to delete a specific topic, you can use the text field to delete tweets containing a word or phrase. Finally, you can tell TweetDelete to wipe your tweets one or every few days. But be warned: Unless you backed up a data file your tweets can’t be recovered after you delete them. 

TweetDelete also offers a premium experience for a one-time $15 payment. Premium includes extra features like unlimited tweet deletion, more customization during mass deletes, an advanced mode to delete tweets by their numeric ID and more. 

TweetEraser: Filter by date, retweets or likes to choose what to mass delete

TweetEraser is a web tool meant to help you clean up your Twitter timeline. With the app, you can filter and mass delete tweets. Here’s how the service works: 

1. Visit tweeteraser.com.

2. Choose your plan. If you choose the free tier, simply click Sign in with Twitter. 

3. Enter your Twitter login information and click Authorize App.

4. Enter the authentication code sent to your phone and click Log in.

5. Click Authorize App again.

6. TweetEraser will ask for your email address to make communication easier, but you don’t have to enter it to continue with the service.

7. Click Get Latest Tweets to see a chart of your Twitter activity. 

TweetEraser will tell you the date and time you posted, how many retweets and likes you earned and whether you added a photo. It also offers the ability to view the original post on Twitter. From there, just check the box to delete individually or all the records on the page — you can customize from 10 tweets per page to 3,200 (the max import for the free version). 

TweetEraser’s free tier says it offers no recurring charges, no timeline spam, a maximum Twitter data import of 3,200 tweets and limited search filters. The tool also offers subscription plans — the Standard Eraser is $7 for 30 days and the Premium Eraser is $10 for 30 days. Both include an ad-free experience, more search filters, the ability to add multiple Twitter accounts and more features. 

TweetDeleter: A way to browse, unlike and permanently delete tweets

TweetDeleter lets you browse, search and delete tweets, as well as unlike tweets. The app lets you search tweets by likes, keyword, profanity, date, media and more. You can also access an archive of your tweets and likes. TweetDeleter also lets you keep deleted tweets on the app, even though they’re permanently deleted from Twitter. 

Here’s how it works: 

1. Visit tweetdeleter.com.

2. Click Sign in with Twitter.

3. Enter your Twitter login information.

4. Click Authorize App.

From there, you’ll be directed to your dashboard where you can search, delete, set up automatic deletes, upload archives and see the deleted tweets you saved on the app. 

TweetDeleter has a free version, but it only lets you delete up to five tweets per month, use five free keyword searches per month, and filter profanity. To use a broader range of TweetDeleter’s features, the app has subscription plans. Standard ($4 a month) lets you delete up to 500 tweets a month and unlocks all search filters and keywords. TweetDeleter Advanced ($5 a month) includes everything in Standard, but lets you delete 3,200 tweets and 1,000 likes per month. The Unlimited tier ($6 a month) unlocks the entire app. No matter what subscription you choose, saving deleted tweets to the app is an extra $5 a month.

TwitWipe: Delete all the tweets posted to your Twitter account

The TwitWipe app deletes all the tweets — retweets, likes, replies, media and mentions — posted on a Twitter account. Followers remain intact, as well as tweets that other people mentioned you in. This one might be helpful if the Twitter account is passed from one person to another.

At the time of publication, TwitWipe’s website was undergoing maintenance. Here’s how the steps were listed on the site: 

1. Visit twitwipe.com.

2. Click Get Started.

3. Click Sign in using Twitter.

4. Confirm or cancel the TwitWipe This Account button. Make sure to read the disclaimers before confirming the wipe.

For more, check out the seven things data privacy experts wish you knew about app security, browser privacy settings you need to change right away in Chrome, Firefox and more, and six Facebook privacy settings you need to check right now.