Technologies

Delete your Twitter history. It’s time to erase those cringeworthy tweets for good

Whether you’re looking to get rid of a handful of posts or mass delete your tweets, here are four apps that can help.

Twitter is an easy way to get a wide range of information. You can catch up on breaking news, spot honest reviews of products and services, and find funny memes and viral threads. (You can even check out Twitter Blue, the social media company’s new subscription service that lets you undo tweets and read ad-free articles.) But, Twitter has been around for well over a decade now, and if you scroll back long enough through anyone’s Twitter history, it could get a bit embarrassing.

Twitter’s popularity bloomed in the late aughts, when many millennials were still in the MySpace mindset — sharing vague sad statuses for attention, angsty song lyrics and selfies in a dirty bathroom mirror. Most people prefer a more polished social presence these days and may want to wipe those outdated posts. You might also want to clear out tweets from a painful time in your life or make your internet presence a bit more private.

Does the thought of someone finding your cringeworthy Twitter origins keep you up at night? Don’t worry — your friends might remember your emo days, but there are several ways to wipe your emo phase from the annals of Twitter. Keep in mind if you use one of these apps, deleting your tweets is permanent and unless you subscribe to a premium tier, the service will usually limit you to deleting 3,200 tweets. We’ll tell you how:

TweetDelete: Mass delete tweets using age and keyword filters

TweetDelete is a free web tool that lets you mass delete your Twitter posts with age and text filters. You can also set the tool up to mass delete on a schedule. Here’s how to get started with TweetDelete:

1. Visit TweetDelete.net.

2. Sign in with Twitter.

3. Read application permissions, privacy settings, T&C.

4. Authorize app.

From there, you can delete up to 3,200 of your most recent tweets with some limitations. There are dropdown menu options to delete tweets older than one week, three months, a year and more. If you’re looking to delete a specific topic, you can use the text field to delete tweets containing a word or phrase. Finally, you can tell TweetDelete to wipe your tweets one or every few days. But be warned: Unless you backed up a data file your tweets can’t be recovered after you delete them.

TweetDelete also offers a premium experience for a one-time $15 payment. Premium includes extra features like unlimited tweet deletion, more customization during mass deletes, an advanced mode to delete tweets by their numeric ID, and more.

TweetEraser: Filter by date, retweets or likes to choose what to mass delete

TweetEraser is a webtool meant to help you clean up your Twitter timeline. With the app, you can filter and mass delete Tweets. Here’s how the service works:

1. Visit tweeteraser.com.

2. Choose your plan. If you choose the free tier, simply click Sign in with Twitter.

3. Enter your Twitter login information and click Authorize App.

4. Enter the authentication code sent your phone and click Log in.

5. Click Authorize App again.

6. TweetEraser will ask for your email address to make communication easier, but you don’t have to enter it to continue with the service.

7. Click Get Latest Tweets to see a chart of your Twitter activity.

TweetEraser will tell you the date and time you posted, how many retweets and likes you earned and whether you added a photo. It also offers the ability to view the original post on Twitter. From there, just check the box to delete individually or all the records on the page — you can customize from 10 tweets per page to 3,200 (the max import for the free version).

TweetEraser’s free tier says it offers no recurring charges, no timeline spam, a maximum Twitter data import of 3,200 tweets and limited search filters. The tool also offers subscription plans — the Standard Eraser is $7 for 30 days and the Premium Eraser is $10 for 30 days. Both include an ad-free experience, more search filters, the ability to add multiple Twitter accounts and more features.

TweetDeleter: A way to browse, unlike and permanently delete tweets

TweetDeleter lets you browse, search and delete tweets, as well as unlike tweets. The app lets you search tweets by likes, keyword, profanity, date, media and more. You can also access an archive of your tweets and likes. TweetDeleter also lets you keep deleted tweets on the app, even though they’re permanently deleted from Twitter.

Here’s how it works:

1. Visit tweetdeleter.com.

2. Click Sign in with Twitter.

3. Enter your Twitter login information.

4. Click Authorize App.

From there, you’ll be directed to your dashboard where you can search, delete, set up automatic deletes, upload archives and see the deleted tweets you saved on the app.

TweetDeleter has a free version, but it only lets you delete up to five tweets per month, use five free keyword searches per month, and filter profanity. To use a broader range of TweetDeleter’s features, the app has subscription plans. Standard ($4 a month) lets you delete up to 500 tweets a month and unlocks all search filters and keywords. TweetDeleter Advanced ($5 a month) includes everything in Standard, but lets you delete 3,200 tweets and 1,000 likes per month. The Unlimited tier unlocks the entire app. No matter what subscription you choose, saving deleted tweets to the app is an extra $5 a month.

TwitWipe: Delete all the tweets posted to your Twitter account

The TwitWipe app deletes all the tweets — retweets, likes, replies, media, mentions too — posted on a Twitter account. Followers remain intact, as well as tweets that other people mentioned you in. This one might be helpful if the Twitter account is passed from one person to another.

At the time of publication, TwitWipe’s website was undergoing maintenance. Here’s how the steps were listed on the site:

1. Visit twitwipe.com

2. Click Get Started

3. Click Sign in using Twitter

4. Confirm or cancel the «TwitWipe This Account» button. Make sure to read the disclaimers before confirming the wipe.

For more, check out the 7 things data privacy experts wish you knew about app security, browser privacy settings you need to change right away in Chrome, Firefox and more, and 6 Facebook privacy settings you need to check right now.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Wednesday, Dec. 24

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Dec. 24.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? I’m Irish-American, but yet 6-Down, which involves Ireland, stumped me at first. Read on for all the answers.. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Wordle or Boggle
Answer: GAME

5A clue: Big Newton
Answer: ISAAC

7A clue: Specialized vocabulary
Answer: LINGO

8A clue: «See you in a bit!»
Answer: LATER

9A clue: Tone of many internet comments
Answer: SNARK

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Sharks use them to breathe
Answer: GILLS

2D clue: From Singapore or South Korea, say
Answer: ASIAN

3D clue: Large ocean ray
Answer: MANTA

4D clue: ___ beaver
Answer: EAGER

6D clue: Second-largest city in the Republic of Ireland, after Dublin
Answer: CORK

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Technologies

Quadrantids Is a Short but Sweet Meteor Shower Just After New Year’s. How to See It

This meteor shower has one of the most active peaks, but it doesn’t last for very long.

The Quadrantids has the potential to be one of the most active meteor showers of the year, and skygazers won’t have long to wait to see it. The annual shower is predicted to reach maximum intensity on Jan. 3. And with a display that can rival Perseids, Quadrantids could be worth braving the cold to see it.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

The show officially begins on Dec. 28 and lasts until Jan. 12, according to the American Meteor Society. Quadrantids is scheduled to peak on Jan. 2-3, when it may produce upwards of 125 meteors per hour. This matches Perseids and other larger meteor showers on a per-hour rate, but Quadrantids also has one of the shortest peaks at just 6 hours, so it rarely produces as many meteors overall as the other big ones.

The meteor shower comes to Earth courtesy of the 2003 EH1 asteroid, which is notable because most meteor showers are fed from comets, not asteroids. Per NASA, 2003 EH1 is a near-Earth asteroid that orbits the sun once every five and a half years. Science posits that 2003 EH1 was a comet in a past life, but too many trips around the sun stripped it of its ice, leaving only its rocky core. The Earth runs through EH1’s orbital debris every January, which results in the Quadrantids meteor shower.

How and where to see Quadrantids

Quadrantids is named for the constellation where its meteors appear to originate, a point known as the radiant. This presents another oddity, as the shower originates from the constellation Quadrans Muralis. This constellation ceased to be recognized as an official constellation in the 1920s and isn’t available on most publicly accessible sky maps.

For the modern skygazer, you’ll instead need to find the Bootes and Draco constellations, both of which contain stars that were once a part of the Quadrans Muralis. Draco will be easier to find after sunset on the evening of Jan. 2, and will be just above the horizon in the northern sky. Bootes orbits around Draco, but will remain under the horizon until just after 1 a.m. local time in the northeastern sky. From that point forward, both will sit in the northeastern part of the sky until sunrise. You’ll want to point your chair in that direction and stay there to see meteors.

As the American Meteor Society notes, Quadrantids has a short but active peak, lasting around 6 hours. The peak is expected to start around 4 p.m. ET and last well into the evening. NASA predicts the meteor shower to start one day later on Jan. 3-4, so if you don’t see any on the evening of Jan. 2, try again on Jan. 3.

To get the best results, the standard space viewing tips apply. You’ll want to get as far away from the city and suburbs as possible to reduce light pollution. Since it’ll be so cold outside, dress warmly and abstain from alcoholic beverages, as they can affect your body temperature. You won’t need any binoculars or telescopes, and the reduced field of view may actually impact your ability to see meteors.

The bad news is that either way, the Quadrantids meteor shower coincides almost perfectly with January’s Wolf Moon, which also happens to be a supermoon. This will introduce quite a lot of light pollution, which will likely drown out all but the brightest meteors. So, while it may have a peak of over 100 meteors per hour, both NASA and the AMS agree that the more realistic expectation is 10 or so bright meteors per hour.

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for Dec. 24, #1649

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle for Dec. 24, No. 1,649.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle is a little tricky, with a double letter that could confuse players. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.