How to delete a Twitter account step by step

X, formerly Twitter, connects millions of people globally, but if you’re looking to step away from the platform, deleting your Twitter account is a quick and straight­for­ward process that takes just a few steps.

What is the dif­fer­ence between de­ac­tiv­at­ing and deleting a Twitter account?

If you have pre­vi­ously thought about deleting your account and started to take the necessary steps, you might have seen that there is also the option to de­ac­tiv­ate the account. This is by no means an al­tern­at­ive option to deleting your account, but rather the pre­lim­in­ary step you have to take so that your profile can be properly deleted. During the de­ac­tiv­a­tion process, your display name, your @ username, and your public profile will no longer be visible to others. After 30 days, everything (including all other data such as tweets, photos, etc.) will be per­man­ently deleted.

How to op­tion­ally archive tweets, images, etc.

If you’ve decided to retire your Twitter career, you can initiate the deletion process yourself. You don’t need to make an official request or directly contact the mi­crob­log­ging service support team. Before you start, however, you should ask yourself whether you want to archive everything you’ve done for sen­ti­ment­al reasons. This means that, at a later date, you will be able to view all photos, texts, and tweets that you published from your account. The short message service doesn’t save backups on its own servers, giving you total control over the locally stored memories, since you can choose the device they should be saved on.

If you’re in­ter­ested in archiving your data, you can request it by accessing your profile settings and selecting the option under ‘Your account’ -> ‘Download an archive of your data’. You will be prompted to enter your password. Af­ter­wards, you’ll receive a veri­fic­a­tion code via email or SMS, which you’ll need to confirm your identity. Once verified, you can easily download your data.

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How do I delete my Twitter account? Step by step

If you have already saved your data locally or are not in­ter­ested in archiving it at all, you can delete your Twitter profile whenever you’re ready. Like the ‘tweet archive’ request described above, this works via the profile settings. However, you need to access the platform’s website on a desktop computer since it’s not possible to delete your account using the iOS and Android mobile app, however you can de­ac­tiv­ate it this way.

Step 1: Go to the Twitter website and log in

Go to the Twitter website using the web browser of your choice. Enter the login in­form­a­tion for the Twitter account that you want to delete. If you’ve forgotten your password, you can click on ‘Forgot password?’. Then you must enter your email address, telephone number, or username connected to this account. Twitter will then email you all the in­form­a­tion you need to reset your password.

Step 2: Open the ‘Settings and privacy’ menu

Now, click on ‘More’ in the left-hand menu bar and select ‘Settings and privacy’ from the menu that appears.

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Step 3: De­ac­tiv­ate your Twitter account

You will auto­mat­ic­ally be taken to the account menu, where you can not only set your username or language and request the in­form­a­tion that is to be archived, but can also de­ac­tiv­ate your account. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to find the ‘De­ac­tiv­ate your account’ button.

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After clicking this button, the mi­crob­log­ging service will inform you of the con­sequences of de­ac­tiv­at­ing your account. Select ‘De­ac­tiv­ate’ once more to confirm you want to begin the deletion process.

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You will be asked to enter your Twitter password one last time before your account is of­fi­cially de­ac­tiv­ated. As long as you don’t log in to the platform with this account in the meantime, it will be per­man­ently deleted (as well as all user data) after the 30-day de­ac­tiv­a­tion status has expired.