Sometimes, Twitter can be an information overload—from bad news, to spammy trends, to content that you have no interest in engaging with.
Luckily, it’s possible to tune your timeline and notifications to filter out harmful content or topics you’d rather not see on your timeline. Read on to learn how to mute tweets that contain particular words, phrases, usernames, emojis, or hashtags.
How to Mute Words and Hashtags on Twitter
We’ll be showing you how to mute words and hashtags in iOS for the purposes of this tutorial, but the steps are more or less the same for Android. If you would like to view the Android instructions anyway, there are steps on the Twitter Help website.
If you want to find out more about how the mute feature works across different websites, check out our article on muting people on social media to find out more.
How to Mute Words on the Twitter App
If you’re using the app on a mobile device, follow these steps to mute words and hashtags:
- Go to your Notifications tab and select the gear icon.
- Select Muted, then Muted words.
- You should now see a list of words you have muted. Select Add.
- Type in the word or hashtag you’d like to mute. You can only add one word or phrase to your list at a time.
- Select whether to mute this word on your timeline, your notifications, or both.
- Choose whether the setting will affect tweets from anyone, or only from people you don’t follow.
- Tap on Duration and choose between Forever, 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days.
- Select Save. You should now see the mute time period next to each of your entered words.
- Select Done.
How to Mute Words and Hashtags on Twitter for Desktops
If you’re in a browser on a computer, the process is similar but the user interface is different.
To mute words and hashtags, you will first need to select More from the side navigation menu, then go to Settings and privacy.
Next, go to the Privacy and safety tab, then select Mute and block.
Select Muted words, then select the plus icon. You can now type in the word or hashtag you’d like to mute. You can only add one word or phrase to your list at a time.
When adding a word, select whether to enable this on your timeline, your notifications, or both.
You can also choose whether the setting will affect tweets from anyone, or only from people you don’t follow.
Under Mute timing, choose between Forever, 24 hours from now, 7 days from now, or 30 days from now.
Finally, select Save.
How to Edit or Unmute Words and Hashtags on Twitter
If you change your mind about words you want to mute or want to edit your list, Twitter allows you to do this.
If you’re using the app on a mobile device, follow these steps to edit your muted words:
- Go to your Notifications tab and select the gear icon.
- Select Muted, then Muted words.
- Select the word or hashtag you’d like to edit or unmute.
- If you want to edit a word, change the Mute from or Mute timing selections and tap Save. If you want to unmute the word, select Delete word and confirm.
- Select Done.
If you’re in a browser on a computer, use these steps:
- Select More from the side navigation menu, then select Settings and privacy.
- Go to the Privacy and safety tab, then select Mute and block.
- Then, head to Muted words.
- If you want to edit a word, choose the word or hashtag you’d like to edit. Change the Mute from or Mute timing selections and select Save.
- If you want to unmute the word, select the mute icon (red crossed-off speaker icon). You should get a small pop-up at the bottom of the screen that says you have unmuted that word.
How to Mute Conversations on Twitter
If you would like to stop receiving notifications for a conversation or thread of tweets, you can choose to mute it. You’ll stop getting notified when people reply to and like the tweets in that conversation.
However, you can still see tweets from the conversation in your timeline and when you click on the original tweet.
Follow these steps to mute a conversation, regardless of what device you’re using:
- View the details of any tweet or a reply in the conversation you wish to mute.
- Select the More icon (three dots in a horizontal line in the top right corner of a tweet).
- Select Mute this conversation, then confirm.
What to Know About Muted Words
As you can see, muting on Twitter is fairly straightforward. You can view a list of your muted words (and unmute them) in your Twitter settings. But, there are a few technicalities around how the feature works, which we’ve rounded up for you…
1. Muting is Not Case Sensitive
This means that regardless of how you type the things you want to mute in your settings (e.g. all uppercase, all lowercase, etc.), all instances of that phrase will be removed from your feed and notifications.
2. Muted Words Include Hashtags
Muting a word will mute both the word itself and its hashtag. For instance, if you mute “apple”, then that will remove both “apple” and “#apple” from your feed and notifications. Any words, phrases, usernames, emojis, and hashtags up to the max character count can be muted.
3. Muted Words and Phrases Can Be in Any Language
Muting is possible across all languages supported by Twitter. At the time of writing, there are 34. You can also include punctuation within a word or phrase when muting, but it is not necessary to place any at the end.
4. Muting an Account Is Different From Muting Account Mentions
To mute tweets that mention a particular account, you must include the @ sign before the name. This will not mute the account itself.
5. Your Mute Settings Apply to Everything Except Search Results
You will not see words and phrases that you mute in your timeline, notifications, or in any of the email recommendations you get from Twitter. However, you may still see your muted words when looking at search results.
6. By Default, Muted Words Are Muted Forever
You can choose how long you would like muted words and phrases to be muted. Muted words are set to a default time period of Forever (until you edit the duration or remove the word from your list).
Control What Your Timeline Looks Like
Social media is becoming more popular and accessible with every passing day, and people are becoming more vocal online. It’s just so easy now, and you can hide behind the anonymity of the internet if you so choose. Spend enough time scrolling, and you’re bound to find something you’d rather not see.
Sometimes you just don’t want to see a particular topic on your social media. It’s good to see that Twitter has fairly detailed options as to how to go about it.
