Do you get nostalgic when you suddenly stumble upon any of your old pictures or old tweets? At least, I do. Most of us get so busy in our lives that we don’t get much time to relive all the things that we have done in the past and that includes all the tweets that we have done on our Twitter account. Do you remember the first tweet that you did? Or the tweet that gained the highest engagement? Well, that is the reason you are here. This guide has everything you need to know to search for your old tweets and that too without scrolling through your feed for hours.
Methods to Look for Old Tweets on Twitter
Method-1 Twitter Advanced Search
This is the most common method to search old tweets on Twitter by date. Here are the steps:
Go to Twitter Advanced Search page- https://twitter.com/search-advanced. You will get a popover window where you have to scroll down till you see the option ‘Dates’ at the bottom.
Here you can add a specific date or a range of dates. Along with the date, you can also narrow down your search results using the other advanced search options such as-
Words used in tweets
Hashtags used in tweets
Tweets from someone’s accounts
Number of replies, likes, or retweets you received on that tweet
If you are wondering how to find old tweets from someone else, you have to fill the ‘Accounts’ section of the advanced search. Enter the Twitter account of the person from whom the tweet was sent and also the account to which the tweet was mentioned including the accounts that were tagged in the tweet.
Once you have entered all the information you have regarding the old tweet you are looking for, click on ‘Search’ and Twitter will show you all the related tweets.
Method-2 Using the Twitter App Search
For this method, you have to simply log in to your Twitter account on the app, then:
Click on the ‘Search’ button given at the bottom of the screen.
If you want to search on Twitter by date, use this format: since: yyyy-mm-dd until yyyy-mm-dd
If you want to search for someone else’s tweets, use this format: “from:” and the user’s username; there is no need to use “@” while searching.
If you are looking for a particular keyword of a tweet, you can add it after the username in the search box.
To search an old tweet using the hashtag, type “#” and the hashtag you are looking for.
To search a tweet by the user mentions, you will need to type “@” and the username that the particular user mentioned in the older tweet.
You will also get a few categories at the top such as Top, Latest, Video, News People, Photos, etc.; click on the category that you think the tweet you are searching for belongs to.
Method-3 Ask Twitter for Archives
Another great idea to search your tweets is to request Twitter for an archive of your tweets. Twitter can provide you a complete and browsable archive of all the tweets that you have sent from your Twitter account; just follow the given directions:
Under the ‘Your Account’ section, you will find the option that says ‘Download an archive of your data’
Next, you will be required to confirm your password to proceed; press ‘Confirm’.
Next, click on ‘Request Archive’ to request a ZIP file with the archive of the entire data.
That was all about how you can search old tweets of your Twitter account using this method. However, it can take some days for Twitter to get ready with your archive, depending on the number of total tweets.
You will get a push notification whenever it will be ready to share the archive and you just have to go to https://twitter.com/settings/account and click on ‘Download Archive’.
Summary
If you want to read your old tweets, you can use the Advanced Search Method by Twitter to look for the tweets from a particular date. For that, you get several filters to choose from and narrow down the results. It is also easy to find old tweets of others, you simply have to use the Accounts section of Advanced Search where you have to mention all the Twitter accounts to whom the tweet is concerned.
