This Free App Archives and Deletes Your Tweets
Want to delete all your tweets? Cyd , an app for Windows, macOS and Linux, automates this process and even provides an offline archive. Even better: this app runs entirely on your computer, meaning you don’t have to trust a third party to access your account in order to use it.
Cyd is a replacement for Semiphemeral, an application we previously recommended . This app, like Cyd, was created by security engineer and journalist Micah Lee . “Over 40,000 people used Semiphemeral until I was forced to shut it down after Elon Musk took over Twitter and started charging exorbitant fees for API access,” Lee told me. Cyd doesn’t rely on the X API, instead it actually opens X in the browser and automates the process of hitting the delete button. Whether you leave X for Bluesky or just delete X, it works well.
To get started, download the application; you will be prompted to sign in to your Twitter account.
After this, you will be asked to create a database of your X-data, which Sid will need to find all your tweets. The recommended way to do this is to use the official X archiving feature that we wrote about earlier . Sid can help you through this process – you just need to press one button. Just be aware that X sometimes takes a few days to provide the archive. If you don’t want to wait, you can try letting Cyd create the database from scratch; just know that he might miss a few things.
Whichever method you choose, Sid will start by creating an archive of your tweets, which will be stored in a folder on your computer.
You can view this archive at any time and even search for tweets. Nice to have around. Once the backup is complete, you can begin deletion.
The free version can delete your tweets and retweets. The paid version, which we’ll talk more about later, can also unfollow everyone you follow and has other features. Mark the items you want to remove, then review them. After this the process will begin. You will see your tweets flash before your eyes as they are all deleted. And that’s it: your tweets disappeared from the network and remained only in your personal archive.
I asked Lee why he was offering such an app for free. “Given what’s going on with X and Elon Musk, everyone should be able to delete all their tweets for free, and I want to make it easy for them to do that.” Lee told me. “Once people are introduced to Cyd, I hope they will subscribe if they want additional features like saving your popular tweets or automatically unfollowing everyone.”
Paid versions of Cyd start at $36 per year and allow you to save specific tweets, unfollow everyone, and delete likes and direct messages. A more expensive offer for teams will appear soon.
And Lee doesn’t plan to stop with X. “I plan to support Bluesky next,” he told me. “We’ll see after that, but most likely Facebook and Reddit.”