Before you delete your account, be sure you’re doing it for the proper reasons and that you’ve followed all essential measures. We’ll go through them in more depth later, but here are a few brief questions to answer before you deactivate:
Do you want to change your username? If this is the case, you do not need to delete your account and create a new one. You may modify your Twitter username to one that isn’t already in use. You won’t lose any followers this way, and you may choose whether to retain some or all of your Tweets.
Do you intend to create a new Twitter account with the same username or email address as your existing one? If this is the case, you should do so before deactivating your account.
Do you wish to save some of the data on your Twitter account? In this situation, before proceeding with the deactivation procedure, you should request your archived data.
Do you just want to delete a large number of Tweets but don’t want to deal with the inconvenience of removing them one by one? Instead of canceling your account and starting over, you may bulk remove your Tweets using an app like TweetDelete.
How to Permanently Deactivate Your Twitter Account
Fortunately, canceling your account is as easy as a few clicks. You must first deactivate your account before you can remove it. This informs Twitter that you want to remove it. Deactivation will instantly erase your account (so no one will be able to view your profile or Tweets on the platform), but final deletion will not occur for 30 days following deactivation.
To remove your Twitter account using a web browser, follow these steps:
Enter your Twitter username and password.
From the main page, choose Settings and privacy by clicking the three-dot menu symbol in the left sidebar.
Select Your account should be deactivated.
After reading the information, click Deactivate.
You’ll be prompted to confirm your password, after which you may click Deactivate once again.
To remove your account using the mobile app, follow these steps:
Use the mobile app to access your Twitter account.
Select Settings and privacy from the menu by clicking your profile image.
Select Account from the drop-down menu next to your username.
Click Deactivate your account.
After reading the messages, choose Deactivate.
You’ll be requested to enter your password before you can click Deactivate one last time.
What happens to my account once I deactivate it?
Your Twitter profile and all related information will no longer be available on the platform after you’ve verified your account deactivation. However, Twitter may take up to 30 days to begin the process of canceling your account. It may take up to a week to completely delete an account.
You may revive your account at any moment during the 30-day period by checking in and verifying reactivation. This is great news for everyone who accidentally canceled their account or had a change of heart a few days or weeks later.
However, your login and email address will be bound to that account for the next 30 days, and you will be unable to use them on another account.
Will any of my Tweets remain visible?
It should be noted that certain accounts and Tweets may still appear in search engines or internet archives.
Engines of discovery
Tweets that have been removed or Tweets from accounts that have been deactivated or deleted may appear in search results for a period of time (until those pages are recrawled). If there are links to removed accounts and Tweets, clicking on them will send you to an error page, but their information may still be viewable on the search engine results page.
If you need to get rid of anything quickly, you may ask Google to delete certain Tweets:
Please sign in to your Google account (or create one).
Make a note of the Twitter URL you wish to delete.
Navigate to Google’s “Remove out-of-date material” page.
Copy and paste the Twitter URL that you copied before.
Click the REQUEST REMOVAL button in red.
Bing and Yahoo both provide comparable services for removing certain URLs. Please keep in mind that you may only request the removal of URLs that no longer exist. You cannot, for example, request that a Tweet be deleted if it is still available on the Twitter network.
Internet back-ups
An internet archive service may also be used to see past tweets. The Library of Congress, for example, used to preserve every single Tweet but discontinued the process in 2017. Wayback Machine is another service that preserves Tweets; the firm does not reveal how it determines certain Twitter sites to archive, although Wayback Machine director Mark Graham says:
So we preserve certain tweets— not all of them, and certainly not nearly all of them— but we archive tens of millions of tweets per week from a number of sources.
When asked whether Donald Trump’s Tweets were automatically preserved, Graham said, “Pretty much.” That’s a simple one.”
But, let’s face it, unless you’re a superstar, politician, or other prominent person, it’s doubtful the Wayback Machine will automatically save your Tweets. However, it does have a tool called Save Page Now, which allows users to archive a particular URL. It’s very likely that one or more of your Tweets will wind up in the archive via this way. Once they’re there, it’s tough to get rid of them since Wayback Machine only accepts removal requests from the domain owner.
How can I alter or transfer my username to another account?
If you wish to alter your existing account’s username, just click the three-dot menu symbol on your main account page, go to Settings and privacy > Account > Login and security, and change your username.
But what if you want to utilize your current login on a different account? You may believe that canceling your account automatically releases your username for usage elsewhere. This, however, is not the case. A deactivated account’s username will be inaccessible for 30 days (until the account is fully deleted).
Instead, you should modify your current account’s username to free up the username you wish to use. Then, update the username of the second account to the one you just freed up. You should make the adjustment as soon as possible since once the username is freed up, it may be taken by anybody.
If you wish to use a certain email address on another account, you must make a similar change (as Twitter only allows one account per email address). However, if you use Gmail, there is a workaround.
Dots in email addresses are not recognized by Gmail, however they are recognized by Twitter. As a result, you may use the same email address but add a random dot. Twitter will perceive it as a new email address, but you’ll really have numerous Twitter accounts tied to the same email account.
For example, the three email addresses above all seem the same in Gmail yet vary on Twitter.
How can I back up my info before deleting my account?
When you delete your Twitter accounts, you may want to retain some of the data saved on the network. Twitter makes downloading all of your data, including Tweets, images, and chats, straightforward.
Here’s how to keep your Twitter info safe:
Select Settings and privacy from the three-dot menu icon.
Click Your Twitter data under Data and permissions.
Enter your password and press the Confirm button.
Then, next to Twitter, click the Request archive option. You may also request Periscope data, which will take you to your Periscope account (if you have one).
When your data is available, you’ll get an email with a link as well as a notice on Twitter. When you go to Your Twitter data, you should now see a Download archive option. To get your data, go here.
What if I simply want to get rid of all of my Tweets?
Rather of deleting your whole account, you could opt to only erase your Tweets. One option is to go through them one by one and eliminate them. To do so, choose Delete from the dropdown arrow in the top righthand corner of the Tweet.
Of course, depending on how many you wish to get rid of, this may be incredibly time-consuming (and carpal tunnel-inducing). Instead, you might try using a third-party tool like TweetDelete or TweetEraser.
TweetDelete’s free edition lets you to delete up to 3,200 Tweets at a time, and you may choose how far back you wish to go with your deletion. TweetEraser and TweetDelete’s commercial edition both allow you to erase all of your Tweets at once.
