← Back to Me

Deactivating your account

Deactivation puts your account in a queue for permanent deletion from Twitter. Deactivation is not available on mobile devices and must be done by accessing twitter.com on the web.

Note: If you are having an account issue (e.g. missing Tweets, incorrect follower or following counts, suspicious DMs or potential account compromise), deactivating and reactivating your account will not resolve it. Please refer to our troubleshooting articles or contact Support.

To deactivate your account:

  1. Sign in to twitter.com on the web. 
  2. Go to your Account settings and click on Deactivate my account at the bottom of the page.
  3. Read the account deactivation information. Click Okay, fine, deactivate account.  
  4. Enter your password when prompted and verify that you want to deactivate your account.

Before you deactivate your account, you should know:

  • We only retain your user data for 30 days from the date of deactivation, after which it is permanently deleted.
  • You may reactivate your account at any time during these 30 days by logging in.
  • You do not need to deactivate your account to change your username or email address; you can change it at any time in your account settings.
  • To use a username or email address on another account, you must first change them and then confirm the change prior to deactivation. (See below for instructions.)
  • We do not control content indexed by search engines like Google or Bing.
  • After deactivation, your account should be removed within a few minutes, however some content may be viewable on twitter.com for a few days.
Want to delete your TweetDeck account? You can do so here. Please note that deleting your TweetDeck account does NOT deactivate your Twitter account. 

To make your username or email address available for re-use before deactivating your account:

  1. On the web, go to your Settings page from the drop-down menu under the gear icon. 
  2. In the username field, choose a new username.
  3. In the email address field, change your email address to a new address you own.
  4. Confirm the new email address via a link we send to you (very important!)
  5. Your email and username will now be available to use on a new account if you choose to sign up again during the 30 day deactivation period.
  6. Proceed with deactivation as listed above. 
Note: Twitter changes your settings immediately. However, old links may appear on Google and other search engines because they have cached old content in their search index. Twitter has no control over this, but you can send search engines a request to take down your information.

Having trouble?

Read our deactivation troubleshooting page.

    Was this article helpful?

    Submitting...