Delete Twitter Direct Messages
*****
This is a hack.
This is not guaranteed to work.
Twitter may change their website at any time.
I am not responsible if something breaks or you decide to delete all your DM’s.
Nor am I responsible if your friends get mad at you for deleting your sent DM’s from their Inbox.
*****
That being said, I’d like to introduce my DM Whacker, DM Deleter, DM Sniper, whatever you want to call it I created a tool to delete your direct messages en-masse on Twitter. After the recent debacle regarding direct messages being exposed, I definitely saw a need amongst some Tweeters do delete their direct messages.
I need to thank @chris4403 who posted his awesome Twitter Translate bookmarklet recently. Were it not for that, I would not have had the motivation nor the codebase off which to build my first bookmarklet.
With that introduction, I’d like to point you in the direction of the new DM Deleter. Simply drag the link that’s in that page up to your Firefox or Safari bookmark bar, navigate to your direct messages, click the bookmark and select your options to delete your DM’s once and for all. The tool allows you to delete all of your messages, or just messages from certain friends.
My apologies for the additional link, but I just wanted to reinforce the point that this tool will delete your direct messages forever. So, use it with care.
Feedback welcome. The ability to delete sent messages will be added in as well soonhas been added in version 0.2.4.
Hi Damon! Many thanks for this bookmarklet. It works great on my Firefox 2.0.0.14 on WinXP.
Some feedback:
1. The parameter “dm’s with [____]” confused me for a while because I thought this meant it would delete any DMs that had the user-specified text in the string as part of the tweet.
Perhaps that confusion can be avoided by rewording the text to “DM’s with user: [_____]”
2. There are times when I want to delete DMs I’ve SENT to a particular user, but not the messages that they sent to me.
I can’t seem to specify this particular combination of parameters right now, because messages from the Inbox are *always* deleted.
3. It would be great if the pop-up at the end of the delete process told me how many direct messages were deleted from my Inbox and Sent items respectively.
There are times when the parameters I provide don’t match any messages at all, and I don’t realize it.
And folks with A LOT of direct messages can better appreciate the value of this bookmarket if they know how many direct messages were deleted on their behalf.
That’s all from me. Thanks again for this great bookmarklet!
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:17 pm@mdy Thanks for your great, detailed feedback!
The first two requests have been added in version 0.2.5.
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:12 amVersion 0.2.6 is out, and it displays how many messages you’ve deleted.
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:58 amThis is fantastic stuff, Damon!
Thanks for such amazingly quick turn around on those suggestions! *thumbs up*
May 3rd, 2008 at 7:03 amI love this idea, and just tried it on both FireFox and Safari. No dice. (Mac OS X)
Any issues you know of, either due to platform, browser or total number? I have 1,655 messages.
May 11th, 2008 at 10:02 amThanks for this! Please click on my name to see my “select all delete: endangered species?” post - I’d LOVE for a similar setting for ALL tweets. That would rock.
May 11th, 2008 at 12:28 pmLouis
I’ll have to see if Twitter updated their layout. Firefox and Safari on OS X is what I developed this on. I’ll check soon when I have a more reliable internet connection (currently on vacation).
May 12th, 2008 at 1:17 am[...] It’s a pain in ye arse to delete old tweets or DMs and there is no mass deletion tool (Damon Cortesi created a great hack that I tried to delete DMs - and it works - but it’s not a long-term [...]
May 21st, 2008 at 5:56 amThanks so much! I had TONS of messages to go through, and that saved me a lot of time!
June 1st, 2008 at 9:24 amOkay, you are officially my hero. I had 252 direct messages from “Remember the Milk” and there was no way I wanted to sit and delete them one a time. I can’t believe how quickly your app got rid of them. Thanks for letting me choose which direct messages to delete as well. That was cool. You totally rock.
June 7th, 2008 at 4:06 pmhey, thanks for this utility. first time I tried it, it didn’t delete any messages but when I ran it again it worked perfectly. gracias.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:29 pm*bows down and kisses feet*
OH I LOVE YOU!!
You just saved me potential HOURS of deleting 200 dms one by one.
Oh I love the intertubes!
June 29th, 2008 at 7:04 pmIt only deletes 20 dm’s at a time. Then it just hangs. I can’t be to picky 20 at a time is better than 1
July 29th, 2008 at 6:36 amUsing Firefox 2.0
it’s working now… thanks
August 5th, 2008 at 12:22 amDon’t know what I’m doing wrong: everything works well (dragging the bookmark etc.), I can see the options whether to delete all or only selected DM, but after I confirm “Are you sure….” nothing happens. I still have all my DM.
August 9th, 2008 at 6:41 amAny suggestions?
[...] http://dcortesi.com/2008/05/02/delete-twitter-direct-messages/ [...]
September 24th, 2008 at 3:35 amthis works great on twitter, but is a little buggy with 3rd party apps like twinkle. i still see some dm’s that seem “stuck”. i logged out of my twinkle account and logged back in, but weird things are happening. i might have to do a hard restart.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:51 pmI think that Twitter did a changeroo and the DM Whacker no longer seems to work
October 18th, 2008 at 7:11 amHi Michael,
You’re right, Twitter is updating their structure on a regular basis. Coincidentally enough, it seems to happen when I have the least amount of Internet access.
I’ll work on fixing this as soon as I can, but it might be a couple days.
October 18th, 2008 at 10:20 pmHi Damon.
I really hope it works now, cuz I recommended it to someone and I don’t wanna let them down
Cheers and thx,
D.
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:16 amThanks for passing on the word, Diana! I updated it earlier this week so it should be ok. Somebody just wiped out 10,000 messages with it a couple days ago.
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:06 amPerfect! Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
November 2nd, 2008 at 5:01 pmSweet! Worked like a charm. Thanks, man.
November 14th, 2008 at 5:37 amHmm, tried using this today, followed all instructions but it doesnt work. Basically, the Delete button is not clickable. Mouse doesn’t change when you mouse over it, either. Any help?
Danke!
November 24th, 2008 at 12:33 pmHi Trish,
Chances are Twitter changed something again - I’ll try to take a look at it in the next few days and let you know!
Bitte Schoën!
November 24th, 2008 at 2:06 pmNot working for me. Click the Delete button and it just sits there. FF #.0.4, Mac OS X 10.4.11
I don’t get many DMs but they clutter up Twitterific. That annoys me no end.
November 30th, 2008 at 11:41 amAnd it’s been updated again. Apologies for the slight delay, enjoy!
November 30th, 2008 at 12:53 pmAwesome little tool! Very handy for a Remember the Milk fanatic like me, thanks for this!
December 1st, 2008 at 1:19 pmHmm… Never knew of the privacy disaster.
December 9th, 2008 at 3:05 amThank you so much for this nifty little tool. Just used it on the latest version of Safari and it worked like a charm!
December 11th, 2008 at 7:19 pmI use it this morning because of all the worry over Twitter DM phishing, and man, this works incredibly awesome.
January 5th, 2009 at 5:28 amThank you for this very nifty and handy tool.
I love it!
Oh yeah, using FF 3.0.5, worked very fast, no glitches or hanging.
January 5th, 2009 at 5:28 amThis is great! FYI: also works perfectly in Opera 9.63, thanks
February 20th, 2009 at 1:56 pmThis totally worked. Your instructions should say. Make a bookmark with the link. I don’t know what a bookmarker is and I think most people say bookmark.
February 25th, 2009 at 12:42 amGreat tool, worked perfectly deleting 70+ dm’s from my inbox.
February 25th, 2009 at 11:34 pmJust wanted to say thanks - works great with Google Chrome!
February 26th, 2009 at 1:51 amDoesn’t work in IE6, IE7 or Flock, it has the indicator that its doing something but after 15 min, I gave up. And I only have 25 DM’s to delete. Twitter has disable the trash icon, so that may be it, but if that worked, I wouldn’t need DMWhacker. Twitter needs to get their app running consistently stable or just take it down. Did Microsoft develop Twitter? With all the bugs/issues, it must have.
February 26th, 2009 at 5:08 amthanks
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:03 am[...] at least phone records from coaches would be easy to subpeona if the occasion required them. If deleting direct messages is possible with third-party applications, and Twitter direct messages-to-texts show up as texts from Twitter’s five-digit 40404 number [...]
March 30th, 2009 at 3:58 pmThank you! Used it & love it! Bye bye spam! Yee haw! You rock!
April 14th, 2009 at 9:36 pmI cannot get DMwhacker to work. It used to, but now when I click on the button it tells me that we need to be on the direct message page (even though i am on the DM page). I cloick ok so that DMwhacker takes me there and nothing happens.
I do have an app in the right side panel of twitter that tracks top trendy searches, could that be causing the problem? I can’t seem to remove it and don’t remember the name of it so that I could contact them to remove the trend app.
what could be wrong with dmwhacker?
thanks for any help
April 16th, 2009 at 5:20 amTwitter changed the url of the dm page. This seems to have ‘broken’ the dm whacker.
May 1st, 2009 at 5:02 amI have 3000 DM’s. i found that i deleted about 600 successfully. Now it seems stuck because in my DM inbox it has 0 people unless i click MORE. even if i click more and restart the app, it says 0 deleted, when actually i have about 2400 left. Thanks.
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:45 amWow,
May 8th, 2009 at 7:47 pmThis program rocks… all those DM’s were getting on my nerves and I can’t seem to wonder if it didn’t help in
slowing down Twitter so I am glad that I found this app.
It works great.
Scott
[...] Go here: The DM Whacker site [...]
May 15th, 2009 at 2:02 pmThanks, Was looking for this. works like a charm.
Firefox 3
Regards, Xeross
May 19th, 2009 at 8:16 amIt appears that the dmwacker doesn’t work with the new Flock 2.5 update that came out a couple of weeks ago.
May 26th, 2009 at 8:47 amThank You for making this! I have blogged about this, and I hope to draw traffic to you.
May 30th, 2009 at 10:28 amGreat tool! Works as advertised. I saw that by date is a request already. An older than date would be cool as an option to by date.
May 31st, 2009 at 5:03 amGreat stuff - thanks for this - works just as it should! Rid 2000 direct messages from my Twitter account in one swoop! Nice
June 12th, 2009 at 8:19 pmthe bookmarklet doesn’t appear in my bookmarks list? What is wrong? I’m using FF, the latest. Thanks!
June 21st, 2009 at 7:13 amIt doesn’t delete them all. Just the first 60…
June 24th, 2009 at 5:58 pmWOW! This is I just “Auto” deleted 1,760 “Sent” Direct Messages from Twitter with this tool in 3 minutes (Simply AWESOME!)
June 28th, 2009 at 9:46 pm