Use the Semiphemeral App to Delete Your Tweets While Keeping Your Favorites
There are many good reasons for deleting your tweets, but I hesitated to pull the trigger. While the idea makes sense on paper , I know there are things I will regret erasing them. We’ve recommended services to clean up your Twitter before, but as far as I know, they all delete your entire history. All or nothing.
Semiphemeral , a program developed by technology reporter Mika Lee , is perfect for those looking to choose what gets massively removed from their Twitter accounts. When you run it, it can delete all of your tweets except the ones you choose to keep – which sounds great on paper, but there is one little catch. To use the app, you have to sign up for a developer’s Twitter account and get an elbow in a procedure that’s a little more complicated than clicking a button and erasing all your tweets in bulk.
That said, if you need security when deleting your tweets but need more control before committing, this is a great way to get that done. We’ll show you how to set it up so that it doesn’t get tedious.
Part 1. Everything you need to install to get started.
You will need access to the Twitter API in order to use the Semiphemeral, which the company assigns after you tell them you are building an app. To get started, log into Twitter, then go to the Apps section of the Twitter developer site and click the Create App button. If you need to, follow the instructions to create a free Twitter developer account. (Twitter will take you through the signup process if you need to.)
In the app creation tool, you will be prompted for a name, description, website, and callback. The name and description are up to you, unless you have a real app in development, Lee generously suggests on his blog to point him to a GitHub page. Finally, you have to use the address generated by the application as the URL – http://127.0.0.1:8080/ . Once you enter it, you will receive several credential codes that you will need to use with the application:
- API key
- API Token
- Access Token Key
- Access Token Secret
Write them down (or copy and paste them into a text file). You will need them later. You will also need to download Pip , an installer that allows you to run Python programs.
Part 2: Using Semiphemeral
Now that you have everything you need, you can download Semiphemeral from Lee’s GitHub page . Then open Pip and enter the following command to install Semiphemeral:
$ pip3 install semiphemeral
You now have two tasks: configure the settings for the tweets you want to delete, for example, all tweets older than two weeks, and then select the tweets from this group that you want to keep.
To start clearing your Twitter history, run the following command in Pip.
$ semiphemeral Configure
Once this is installed, the program will generate a local website – this is http://127.0.0.1:8080/ , the site we talked about earlier. Pull it up in your web browser to access the Semiphemeral configuration menu. Once you enter your Twitter API credentials and username, you can specify which Twitter posts you want to keep and program some exceptions from the cleanup process, such as tweets with a lot of likes and retweets.
Before you can set exceptions, Semiphemeral needs to load your Twitter timeline first, so run the following line in Pip. Lee noted on his blog that this is likely to take a long time, especially on first launch. Be patient.
$ semiphemeral Fetch
Once you’re done uploading, you can manually select the tweets to save. The list is searchable so you don’t have to scroll through each tweet one by one. Once you’ve selected your options and selected the tweets you want to keep, you can delete your tweets with the last line in Pip:
$ semiphemeral Delete
One thing you need to know about this process is that it doesn’t automatically repeat itself. If you post more tweets, you will have to go back to Pip and rerun the delete command to delete them later. If you want to get fancy, you can set Semiphemeral to automatically start at whatever interval you want, but this is probably a bit more intensive process than you need. Run the uninstall command every few months (or once a year) and you’re done.
To learn more about deleting tweets, watch this video.