How to download your Twitter archive and get a full record of all your tweets, followers, and more

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How to download your Twitter archive and get a full record of all your tweets, followers, and more
You'll need to request your Twitter archive before you can download it.SOPA Images / Getty Images
  • Your Twitter archive includes all your tweets, replies, followers, Lists, and more.
  • To download your Twitter archive, head to the Account menu on the website or in the app.
  • Once you request a copy of your Twitter archive, it might take a few days before you receive it.
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If you're a Twitter power user, you might have thousands of tweets and likes on your account. That can be a lot to sift through just using the website or app.

You can request a full record and archive of all your Twitter activity — all your tweets, photos, followers, and more — by heading to your Account options page on the website or in the app. It might take a while to download depending on how active your account is, but you'll be able to download it on any device.

How to request your Twitter archive

These steps are pretty much the same both on the website and in the mobile app.

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1. Head to the Twitter website or open the app and log into your account, if you haven't already.

2. If you're on the website, click the More option in the left sidebar. In the mobile app, tap your profile picture in the top-left corner.

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3. Select Settings and privacy.

How to download your Twitter archive and get a full record of all your tweets, followers, and more
Open the "Settings and privacy" menu.Twitter; William Antonelli/Insider

4. Select Your account, and then Download an archive of your data.

How to download your Twitter archive and get a full record of all your tweets, followers, and more
Head through the Settings menu to find the page that lets you archive your data.Twitter; William Antonelli/Insider

5. You'll have to re-enter your password and a two-factor authentication code. If you don't have two-factor set up, you'll be taken to a different page to enable it first.

6. Select Request archive.

How to download your Twitter archive and get a full record of all your tweets, followers, and more
Tap or click the "Request archive" option.Twitter; William Antonelli/Insider

Now you'll have to wait for Twitter to make your archive. When it's done, you'll get a notification on Twitter and an email with a link to it.

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How to download your Twitter archive and get a full record of all your tweets, followers, and more
Click the highlighted "Download" option.Twitter; William Antonelli/Insider

How to download and see your Twitter archive

Once you get the email or notification from Twitter:

1. Open it up and click download, or head back to the data menu using the steps we described above. You'll have to enter your password and a two-factor authentication code again.

2. Click Download archive, and then click it again on the next page. You'll be given a ZIP file to download — it might take a while, depending on your internet connection and how big it is.

How to download your Twitter archive and get a full record of all your tweets, followers, and more
Download your Twitter archive.Twitter; William Antonelli/Insider

3. Once you download the ZIP file, unzip it and open it.

4. There are a lot of different files and folders inside. The most important are:

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  • The file called Your archive.html is a personalized webpage containing the data that Twitter thinks will be most useful to you. This includes all your original tweets (no retweets or replies), your direct messages, the last year-or-so of Likes, your "Moments" and Lists, and a massive amount of information that advertisers have collected about you. You can open this file in nearly any web browser.
How to download your Twitter archive and get a full record of all your tweets, followers, and more
The custom HTML page that comes included with a Twitter archive file.Twitter; William Antonelli/Insider
  • Inside of the data folder, you'll find README.txt, a document explaining what every single file in the folder is and what it contains.
  • You'll also see a folder called tweet_media, which has every photo and video you've uploaded to Twitter or retweeted.
How to download your Twitter archive and get a full record of all your tweets, followers, and more
The highlighted file and folder contain a lot of data.William Antonelli/Insider

Quick tip: You can download and open these folders on your phone, but we recommend looking at them on a computer. It makes browsing through the files and HTML page much easier.

Most files inside of the archive are JSON files (.js), which you can open in nearly any web browser or word processor. But the easiest way to read your archive is using the HTML file.

Be sure to download your archive within a few days of getting it — after about a week, it'll expire and you'll need to request it again.

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