Looking to help return your sanity and free up hours of your life? Perhaps deleting your Twitter account and other social media platforms might be a good place to start.

If that sounds like you, then this is the guide you need. Inside I’ll show you precisely how to do that with minimal effort.

There are all sorts of reasons why people decide to delete their Twitter accounts permanently. Some people get sick of all the cursing and abuse from Twitter trolls. Some people have had enough of the foolishness, while others have decided that Instagram or TikTok is where it’s at with social media these days.

Whatever your motivation, if you have decided to permanently delete your account and all of your data, from your Twitter profile picture to your old tweets, in this guide, we will share all the necessary account deactivation information.

Keep scrolling down to get yourself Twitter free.

Why would you want to delete your Twitter account permanently?

Everyone is different but there could be all sorts of reasons why you want to hit deactivate and delete your account:

• Escape trolls and cyberbullies
• Protect your location information
• Protect your online privacy and stop Twitter harvesting your basic account information for targeted ads
• Keep your opinions on things private
• Escape an addiction to Twitter
• Become more sociable
• Stop reading fake “breaking news”
• Bored of the content
• Updating your social media to a trendier platform like Instagram or TikTok.
• Remove Tweets you regret sending

How quickly can you delete your Twitter account?

There is good and bad news here.

On the positive side, Twitter makes it easy to delete your Twitter account. There are just a few simple steps for you to follow.

But once you have completed that process, things get a bit more complex. Before your account is permanently gone, you have to go through the deactivation process.

This is essentially a waiting period that is there in case anyone changes their mind after initiating deletion and wants to reinstate their account.

Deactivating or Deleting your Twitter account

It’s easy to get mixed up between these two terms but the truth is that they are all part of the same process.

When you go through the process of deleting your Twitter account, you will first have to go through the deactivation period.

This lasts for 30 days.

During the deactivation period, your Twitter account is largely invisible on Twitter. But the info is still retained on the Twitter servers.

This allows you time to change your mind and reinstate your Twitter account should you choose not to deactivate your account after all.

After the 30-day period has elapsed, if you have done nothing, all of the information associated with your Twitter account is permanently deleted and your Twitter account’s username is no longer associated with your account.

This means that the same username becomes available for other users.

How to delete your Twitter account

If you have decided to deactivate your account permanently, there are a few simple steps you need to follow:

1. Log into your Twitter account with your username and password.
2. Click on your Profile.
3. Select More.
4. Click on Settings and Privacy.
5. At the bottom of the Settings and Privacy menu, select Deactivate account button.
6. The site will ask you to confirm your decision, and you will have to select the ‘Deactivate’ button again. Click on the red deactivate button at the bottom of the page to do this.
7. Twitter will then ask you to enter your password. Do this and then again click the red deactivate button.
8. DO NOT LOG INTO YOUR ACCOUNT FOR 30 DAYS – The above process starts the deactivation period. As long as you don’t log into your account, after that period has elapsed, your Twitter account will be permanently deleted.
9. Delete the Twitter app from your devices. This step isn’t compulsory but it certainly helps avoid accidentally logging into accounts you no longer want to use.

How to delete Twitter on Android

If you only use Twitter on an Android device, the process of complete deletion of your account is slightly different:

1. Tap your profile icon or more icon, the three-dot menu icon at the top of the screen.
2. Tap Settings and Privacy menu.
3. Select the Your Account option.
4. Tap Deactivate Account option.
5. Tap Deactivate.
6. Enter your password when asked to do so. Then tap Deactivate.
7. Tap Yes, Deactivate, and you will successfully deactivate your account.

This tells Twitter to start the deactivation process and prepare to get rid of the information collected.

As above, you will need to avoid logging into your account for 30 days and you might want to delete the Twitter app from your Android device.

How to delete Twitter on iOS

If you only use Twitter on an iPad or iPhone device, the process for permanently deleting your account is again different.

To deactivate it, you need to:

1. Tap the profile icon at the top of the screen.
2. Select Settings and Privacy.
3. Tap Account.
4. Click Deactivate Your Account.
5. Click Deactivate and enter your password.
6. Click Deactivate and then when prompted, tap Yes, Deactivate.

As with all other devices, you will need to avoid logging into your account for 30 days and you might want to delete the Twitter app from your iPhone or iPad too.

Will any of your Tweets still be visible?

Sometimes.

Once you deactivate your account, any hyperlinks to that account to Tweets made from it will come up with an error message. Your direct messages will also disappear.

So links to your deactivated account will no longer work.

But browsers and search engines work a bit differently. They will continue to show content from your account’s main page until they recrawl and Twitter systems spot that your account is no longer there.

It is difficult to estimate how long this will take and all search engines will be different, so doing so won’t immediately remove your info and make Twitter safe.

If you specifically want to remove something quickly, there is usually a way to request this. With Google, you will need to do the following:

1. Log in to your Google account with your email and password.
2. Copy the Twitter URL of the content you want to remove.
3. Visit Google’s Remove outdated content page.
4. Paste in the Twitter URL from step two.
5. Click the red Request Removal button.

How can you save your Twitter data?

If you wish, you can choose to download and save some or all of your Twitter data for future use. To do this, you will need to follow these simple steps:

1. Log into your Twitter account.
2. Click on the More option.
3. Select Settings and privacy.
4. Tap Download an archive of your data.
5. Enter your password and click Next.
6. Verify it’s you via text message or email.
7. Enter the verification code and click Next.
8. Click the Request archive button. (There is a separate option to request Periscope data)
9. As soon as your data is ready, you’ll receive a notification in Twitter and an email with a longer link.
10. Visit Your Twitter data, and click on the Download Twitter archive button. This will download all your Twitter info, so you will keep it even when Twitter itself gets to the point where it will remove data that belongs to you.

Consider whether you wish to save your information because, once your account gets deleted, everything will be removed, including your profile photo, username, password, settings preferences, payment information, billing address, and even information about other’s tweets that you liked and shared.

Can you delete all your Tweets without deleting your account?

Yes. If you want to strip out the content of your Twitter account without actually deactivating Twitter, there are tools that will allow you to do this.

With Twitter, you can only do this one tweet at a time. Click on the drop down menu arrow in the upper righthand corner of a Tweet and then click Delete.

Alternatively, you can use an external tool such as TweetDelete or TweetEraser.

These are paid for tools that allow you to mass-delete tweets. But there is a free version of TweetDelete that will let you delete up to 3,200 Tweets at a time.

Summary

Whatever your reasons for deleting Twitter, the process for doing so is relatively straightforward.

It is important to remember the difference between your account being deactivated and deleted. Be sure not to log into your account during the deactivation period as this will automatically reactive your account again.

Once that 30-day period has elapsed, your Twitter account will be deleted permanently and you are free to focus your energies on something else.

Or start up a new account, even with the same email. It’s entirely up to you!

Looking to delete your Instagram account, delete your Google history or delete your Facebook account? Our handy guides have tips on how to do that too!