How to Download Your Twitter (X) Archive
Downloading your Twitter (X) archive takes about two minutes of clicking and one or two days of waiting. On the X website, open Settings and privacy, choose Your account, then Download an archive of your data. Confirm your password, type the verification code X sends to your email or phone, and press Request archive. X then builds the file on its side — typically within 24 to 48 hours — and notifies you when it is ready. What lands on your disk is a ZIP with a browsable HTML viewer of everything your account has ever done: tweets, likes, direct messages, media, even the ads data X keeps about you. It is the only complete copy of your X history you will ever own, and it is the first thing to grab before any timeline cleanup: archive first, delete second.
Request Your Archive: The Quick Steps
- Open x.com in a browser and sign in.
- Go to Settings and privacy, then Your account.
- Select Download an archive of your data.
- Re-enter your password when prompted.
- Enter the verification code sent to your email or phone.
- Press Request archive and close the tab.
- Return after the notification and download the ZIP.
The mobile app offers the same option, but the web flow is smoother and the ZIP far easier to handle on a computer. The wait is genuine: archives are generated in a queue on X’s side, and nothing you do speeds it up. When yours is ready you get a push notification and an email, and a Download archive button appears on the page where you made the request.
What’s Inside the ZIP — and What Isn’t
Unzip the file and the first thing to open is “Your archive.html” — a self-contained viewer that runs in any browser, no internet needed. It shows your tweets in a timeline you can scroll and search, plus tabs for likes, direct messages, and media. For most people, this viewer is the archive.
Behind it sits a data folder with the raw material. tweets.js holds every post you have ever published as structured JSON — text, timestamps, IDs, engagement counts — which is what makes the archive useful to scripts and cleanup tools. like.js lists everything you have liked, as snippets and links. direct-messages.js contains your DMs in full, group chats included, with both sides of every conversation; the media you sent and received sits in folders alongside. You also get your profile history, follower and following lists, and the advertising files — which ads you saw, and which targeting categories X placed you in.
Just as important is what is not there. The archive only exports what exists at the moment it is generated: tweets you deleted last year are not in it, and no future archive will ever contain them. It does not include full copies of other people’s tweets — your replies carry your half only, and likes are pointers rather than backups. Drafts never leave the device they were written on.
Archive First, Delete Second: The Audit Workflow
The archive is what turns a nervous cleanup into a calm one, for two reasons.
First, it is the backup. The usual reason people hesitate to delete a decade of tweets is the sense of erasing their own history. Once the ZIP is on your disk, that history is safe — private, offline, and searchable. The public copies stop being precious the moment you hold a private one.
Second, it is the map. Open the viewer and read your own timeline the way a stranger would: scroll year by year, search the keywords that make you wince — an ex-employer, an old feud, the politics of a previous you. Ten minutes of honest reading converts “I should clean up someday” into a concrete list: everything before 2019, everything matching two or three keywords, and that one thread. With the audit done, the deleting itself is mechanical — our guide to deleting all your tweets walks through every route, from emptying the account to retiring just an era.
Unpost is the on-device way to run that step. It is a mobile app for iOS and Android that bulk-deletes your own tweets from your phone: you sign in through the regular X web login inside the app, the encrypted session stays on your device, and tweets are removed one at a time the way you would do it manually, at a pace that respects X’s limits. Its date-range and keyword filters continue the audit you just did on the archive — point them at the years and topics on your list, review what matched, then let it work. The same app also cleans up Reddit, Discord, Instagram, and Slack.
Clean Your Timeline
Archive saved? Now clear the public copies.
Unpost signs in on your device through the regular X web login and bulk-deletes your tweets the way you would manually — with date and keyword filters shaped by the audit you just ran.
The free plan includes a daily deletion allowance, enough to clear a modest backlog over a few days; premium removes the cap for bigger timelines.
Archive Traps to Avoid
The download link expires. You have a limited window — days, not weeks — to fetch the ZIP once it is ready. Miss it and the file is gone; you start over with a new request and a new wait. Download it the day it arrives and store it somewhere safe.
You cannot stockpile requests. X processes one archive request at a time, so a fresh snapshot means asking again and waiting again. If you want a before-and-after record of a cleanup, plan for two full cycles.
Big accounts mean big files. A decade of photos and videos can push the ZIP into multiple gigabytes, sometimes split into several parts. Download on Wi-Fi and prefer a computer over a phone.
Verification needs current contact details. The confirmation code goes to the email address or phone number on the account. If those are stale, update them first — otherwise the request fails at the first hurdle.
It arrives quietly. One push notification and one email are easy to miss. If a couple of days have passed, revisit the same settings page — when the file is ready, the download button is sitting right there.
What the Archive Keeps vs What Stays on X
| Your data | In the archive | On X after you delete |
|---|---|---|
| Tweets and retweets | Full text, dates, and media up to the generation date | Removed from your profile and search immediately |
| Likes | A list with snippets and links | Gone from your likes tab |
| Direct messages | Complete conversations, media included | Your copy disappears; other participants keep theirs |
| Photos and videos | Original files in the media folders | Deleted along with the tweet that carried them |
| Ads and account data | Impressions, interest categories, account history | Governed by X’s internal retention, not your deletes |
| Copies made by others | Not included | Screenshots and Wayback snapshots stay wherever they live |
Bottom Line
The archive is free, complete, and takes minutes to request — there is no version of a Twitter cleanup where skipping it makes sense. Once your tweets are deleted, the ZIP becomes the only place they exist at all: X has no recycle bin, and as our guide to seeing deleted tweets shows, nothing on the outside reliably brings a deleted post back either. So run the order that keeps everything and exposes nothing: request the archive today, read it honestly when it lands, then take the delete list to Unpost and clear the public copies while the private one sits safe on your disk.
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