How to Use Your Twitter Archive File

Written by Christopher Batchelor | Edited by Nicole Levine, MFA

Last Updated: March 4, 2024

This wikiHow guide teaches you how to request, download, and browse your archive on X, formerly known as Twitter. The process is easy, but it can take 24 hours or more for X to generate the necessary files. Your X archive is a ZIP file that contains all of your activity since signing up.

Things You Should Know

Your X archive contains all your content and information within a ZIP file.
To open your archive, you'll need to extract all your files.
When browsing your archive, you'll find the information similar to the standard X layout.

Part 1

Part 1 of 3:

Requesting Your Archive

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1
Go to https://www.twitter.com in a web browser. You can request an archive of all of your tweets, messages, and media you've shared on X using any computer, phone, or tablet.
- If you're not already signed in to X, enter your login details to sign in now.
2
Open your menu. If you're using a computer or tablet, click or tap the More option with three horizontal dots in the left panel. If you're using a phone, tap your profile photo at the top-left corner.
- If you don't see the menu on the left, click or tap your profile photo at the top-left corner to open it.
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You'll find this near the middle of the menu.
This displays some account-specific settings and actions.
5
Click Download an archive of your data. This opens the X Data page.
- Depending on your security settings, you may be asked to verify your identity before you can continue.
Once you choose this option, your archive request will be sent to X. It can take 24 hours or more to process your archive request. When your archive is ready to download, you will receive a notification in the X platform app (or on Twitter.com, if you're logged in on the web), as well as receive an email with instructions.

Part 2

Part 2 of 3:

Opening Your Archive

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1
Download your archive ZIP file from Twitter.com. When you receive a notification and/or email from X stating that your archive is ready for download, you can download it from the same area at which you placed the request. You'll want to use a computer to do the download and manage the archive, as the file can be quite large and contains numerous flat files. To download:
- Go to https://www.twitter.com.
- Click More and select Settings and privacy.
- Click Your account.
- Click Download an archive of your data.
- Click Download archive.
- Choose a location to save the ZIP File and click Save to start the download. To make things simple, save the archive file to your default Downloads folder, or to your desktop.
2
Unzip the archive file. The file you downloaded has a long name containing many letters and numbers, beginning with the word "twitter" and ending with ".zip." Here's how to unzip it:
- If you're using Windows, right-click the ZIP file and select Extract all. Then, choose a folder to extract the files to and select Extract.
- If you're using a Mac, double-click the ZIP file to immediately unzip it. This places a new folder with the same name in the current location.
3
Open the new folder and double-click the file called Your archive.html. This opens a special HTML file containing the details of your archive in your default web browser. When it loads, the file will look like a website.
- If you downloaded a version of your archive prior to 2021, you may not find a Your archive.html inside. X stopped providing a web file in their downloads for a period of time, which made it difficult to browse archives. Now, as long as your archive is 50 GB or smaller (it's very, very rare to have an archive larger than that), this file will be included.
- If your archive is larger than 50 GB, you can use a free tool called the X archive browser. On that website, click Download ZIP in the upper-right corner to download the ZIP to your computer, and then unzip the file. Inside the new folder you'll find a file called "index.html." Drag this file into the data folder that's inside your downloaded, unzipped archive.^{[1]
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  Research source} Then, double-click index.html in that folder to view your archive in a handy, but barebones, viewer.

Part 3

Part 3 of 3:

Browsing Your Archive

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1
Click the Account tab to view your archived account details. This option is in the left panel. Several new tabs will expand at the top of the page.
- Click the Profile tab at the top to see what was on your X profile at the time of download, including your followers and who you are following.
- Click Connected applications to view all apps you've given permission to access some of your X data.
- Click Contacts to see a list of contacts you've uploaded to X from your phone or tablet.
- Click Sessions to see when your account was accessed by other apps.
- Click Account access history to see your entire login history.
2
Click the Tweets tab in the left panel to view your tweets. This displays your tweets similarly to how you'd see them on your X profile. You can also use the Replies and Retweets tabs at the top to see the information captured at the time of the download.
- To search your tweets, use the "Search tweets" bar at the top-right corner of the page. You can filter the search results using the "Search filters" panel.
Every tweet you've ever clicked the heart on will appear on this page.
This option is also in the left panel, and the resulting DM list will appear similarly to how it appears on Twitter.com. You can search through your DMs using the "Search Messages" bar at the top.
Also on the left panel, this tab displays any account that was muted or blocked at the time you requested your archive will appear here.
6
Click the Personalization tab to see what X knows about you. You'll see this toward the bottom of the left panel. Here you'll find several tabs at the top with different information X uses to determine demographics information for advertising purposes.
- The Interests tab displays a list of things X thinks you are interested in based on your activity.
- Advertiser lists tells you which of X's advertisers has added you to their audiences.
- The Location tab lists locations associated with your account.
- Saved Searches displays any of the searches you've saved on X.
All of the ads X places in your feed will appear on this tab. You can click Show details under any ad to see who the target audience for the ad was, and why it was shown to you.
If you've created, subscribed, or have been added to any X list, those lists will appear here.
If you've used X's Moments tool to curate any Moments, you will find them here.
10
View a list of all files in your archive. First, click the X icon at the top-left corner of your archive to return to the main page. You'll see a section at the top-center that states that the page you've been browsing is "not all the data from the archive," and that you can click this folder to view additional files. If you click that link, you'll see a file tree containing all of the files you can open in your archive. This includes photo and video files you shared in DMs, fleets, moments, in tweets, and on your profile.
- Click any of the folders containing the word media to see all of the photo and video files of that type. For example, if you click tweet_media, you'll see a list of image files you've shared in tweets. Click any of these files to display the image.
- The files ending in .js are JavaScript files that may look a bit jumbled or confusing on the page. Still, you can comb through these files to see what's available.
- You can click the file called README.txt on this page to read about the different types of files included in your archive, including the ones ending with the .js extension.

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Can I see how many tweets I have deleted from my account?

ICGIL

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No. Deleted tweets cannot be counted.

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Can I see old DMs with my Twitter archive?

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As of right now, no, I don't think this is possible.

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