Download Twitter Archive

Twitter users up until now had only one option at their disposal to access past messages that they have posted on the social messaging site: to browse the tweets manually on the site itself. This was not really practicable at all and while search may have helped find messages of interest, a missing backup or export feature to local computer systems was something that many Twitter users missed dearly as they could make good use of it.

If you open the Twitter settings right now you may notice a new entry at the very bottom of the account settings page. The request your archive button is new and enables you to create an archive containing all of your messages on Twitter.

Just click on the request your archive button and wait until you receive a message from Twitter send to your email account that contains the download link. After a couple of minutes tops unless you have posted hundreds of thousands of messages on the site.

The email’s subject is “Your Twitter download is ready” and contains a link that you need to click on, or copy and paste, to get to the page where you can download your Twitter archive.

Click the download button saves a tweet.zip file with all of your messages to the local system. After download just unpacking the archive and index.html file it contains in its root folder in a web browser of choice.

The archive lists tweets of the selected month on the left, and an overview of the account’s Twitter history on the right. Here you can jump to specific months of interest, or use the search on top to find specific tweets in the archive.

The feature is currently being rolled out. If you do not use an English language interface and do not see the button, try switching to English for a moment as the button should become visible in the settings afterwards.