Twitter search can now find a particular piece of content in direct messages that matches your keyword—and you can filter out people, groups or messages.
- Twitter has announced that its search bar can now be used to search across your direct messages using whatever keyword you type in. This is a major upgrade: Before, you were limited to finding people or group chats in your Twitter inbox.
- You can also refine your search results using filters to only list specific people, groups or messages that match the keyword you’re trying to search.
- Of course, searching for person or conversation names still works, and you can even decide whether you want to see results for people, groups, or messages — handy if the keyword you’re trying to search happens to be someone’s name.
Twitter search now scours the content of messages
If you had a DM conversation with a Twitter follower about the new Mac Studio, for instance, you can now quickly surface that specific chat by typing “Mac Studio” in Twitter’s search bar. Whatever keyword you type in, you’ll now get results across your inbox that match your search criteria. If the search term is too broad, you’ll likely end up with a long list of matches. In that case, filters will come to the rescue: Simply choose whether you’d like to only see people, groups or messages in search results. Read: How to search any account’s tweets in Twitter’s mobile app
The company announced this feature in a post on Twitter.
“We know you’ve been waiting for the option to search your DMs,” it reads. “Now you can use the search bar in your inbox to find specific messages using keywords and names.” This is a welcome improvement versus before, when searching across your Twitter conversations would only return the names of people you’ve spoken to or group chats in your inbox that matched the keyword you were trying to search.
We know you’ve been waiting for the option to search your DMs…
Now you can use the search bar in your inbox to find specific messages using keywords and names. pic.twitter.com/A41G8Y45QI
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) March 23, 2022
For some people, the feature appears to surface across direct messages no older than three years. This is likely a server-side issue that will resolve once the algorithm has finished scanning everyone’s inboxes to include results from 2019 or earlier.
Enhanced Twitter search is available on iOS, Android and the web. If you don’t have it already, check back in a few days. Major apps usually roll out new features in stages, and Twitter is no exception. Read: Tips for using Twitter search like a pro