When your deactivated Twitter account reaches the 30-day or 12-month limit (whichever you choose), all your data will be deleted from the social network’s servers, forever. However, if you want to keep your data, Twitter offers a way to download an archive of everything associated with your account that remains on its servers.
It may not seem like your Twitter data will be very valuable in the long run. But if you ever need to use a link you’ve shared (or been shared with you), need evidence of a previous exchange, or just want a way to take a trip down memory lane, you can also this simple step to ensure that your data is available to you in the future.
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For this bit, you’ll need to use Twitter’s website. None of its mobile apps offer this option. The process is almost identical whether you access the website via desktop browser or mobile browser. The process steps are as follows:
Open your desktop or mobile browser.
Navigate to Twitter.com and click on More on the left side.
Then click on Settings and Privacy.
Once inside, click on your accountthen click on Download an archive of your data.
You may need to enter your password at this point, then you will be able to click Request archive.
Once you have done this, you will receive a notification that the process may take up to 24 hours to process. Once the archive is ready, you’ll receive a mobile notification via your Twitter mobile app and an email.
Both notifications will provide a link that will automatically take you to your site SETTINGS page on the Twitter website. There you can download the prepared archive of your data.
What you will actually download is a Zip file that you can unzip/uncompress into a folder with two important items inside: a HTML folder with title Your archive and a Data folder that contains all the media you’ve tweeted, such as uploaded videos, images, and animated .gifs.
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The HTML file will open in your browser, where you’ll be able to navigate through it just like you would on the Twitter website.
The data folder can be navigated like any folder on your desktop or smartphone. Within it, you can play/watch your media locally, assuming the media type is supported by your current device.
Once this is done, you have your data and can proceed to the final step. If anything within this data is valuable to you, we would strongly recommend that you back it up, either locally or to a cloud storage service of your choice.
Next, let’s get rid of that account.
