Because auto-refreshing timelines were causing posts to vanish, Twitter is changing the way you see new tweets

Twitter is fixing an issue causing some tweets to disappear by changing the way you see tweets. And that, boys and girls, means no more auto-refreshing timelines!

Twitter's bird logo set against a transparent background

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Twitter’s web app used to automatically refresh people’s timelines
  • This has caused some tweets to disappear while still being read
  • The change has been implemented for Twitter’s web interface

How to manually refresh Twitter timelines on the web

Writing on Twitter, the company said it was aware that its web users were ticked off by tweets disappearing from view mid-read when the timeline seems to refresh automatically. “A tweet would move up the timeline as replies were added to the ongoing conversation,” the company announced on Twitter. “Since some conversations can evolve quickly, this made it so you didn’t see the same tweet repeated in the timeline.”

This is no longer the case.

Now your timeline won’t refresh automatically when using Twitter’s web app, meaning tweets won’t vanish as you were reading them. As a result, you’re expected to manually refresh your timeline on the web. Simply hit the tweet counter bar at the top, right above existing tweets in your feed, to load new tweets into the timeline. Read: Tips for using Twitter search like a pro

Tweets still disappearing mid-view on Twitter.com?

Twitter is only making this change for its web interface at twitter.com.

The company’s mobile apps for iOS and Android, however, remain unchanged because disappearing tweets were never an issue there. Besides, Twitter’s mobile apps do not automatically refresh your timeline so there was nothing to fix in the first place.

You may find after logging in at twitter.com that the issue still persists. That’s normal behavior because not all users are getting the updated web app at the same time. In fact, the new web app is being rolled out in stages over the next two months.