It’s understandable if you’re less enthusiastic about Twitter now than you were five years ago—the vibes are, as they say, off. You might even be contemplating deleting your tweets or setting your account to private. Either way, you have to ask: Do you really want all of your tweets to disappear from the web? Forever?
There’s a happy medium, it turns out. You can make your own archive of tweets and even share it on your personal website. Here’s how.
Twitter offers a service to help you download your data. To get started, head to Twitter in your web browser, open the settings, and click the Download an archive of your data button.
You will be asked to verify your identity via SMS or email, after which you’ll be told that Twitter is processing your request. Assuming whatever servers Twitter still has are up and running, you will eventually get a message that your archive is ready. It comes in a ZIP file. You can explore your Twitter history inside this archive, if you want.
There’s a complete archive of your tweets and likes, complete with media. If all you want is to know that you have a backup of your tweets, this is it. You can even use the search function to find a specific tweet.
This is great, but it’s not useful as a public archive. There aren’t URLs for the individual tweets—all links point back to Twitter itself—meaning someone who wanted to share a link to a specific archived tweet wouldn’t be able to.
If you have a website and can upload to it via FTP or some other means, it’s possible to convert your downloaded Twitter archive into a public archive. The website Tiny Subversions has a Make Your Own Twitter Archive tool that’s very handy for this, especially if you intend to upload your archive to a personal website.
To get started, head to the site. I recommend reading the complete instructions—the action starts at the bottom of the page. First enter the URL where your archive will ultimately be hosted—this will ensure that links work.
Next click Choose File and upload the .ZIP file you downloaded from Twitter. Note that your file will not be uploaded to any server—the conversion happens entirely on your own device. A file named archive.zip will show up in your Downloads folder. Unzip that file and upload it to your web host.
I set up my own archive just to demonstrate this. I like the idea that my tweets are still available, but on a site that I control. I also like that threads I made myself show up as threads. All of my media is there too. Having said that, it’s not perfect—conversations with other people don’t show up, and neither do moments, circles, or co-tweets.
There are a few other tools out there, if this one doesn’t work the way you like. Twitter archive parser can download the full-resolution images and videos while making both Markdown and HTML copies of all tweets, but it’s not great as a public archive because individual tweets don’t get their own page. There’s also a tool for importing your tweets to Mastodon, but it’s not exactly user friendly.
For most people, I recommend the Make Your Own Twitter Archive tool—it makes a public archive without a lot of work on your part.
