Delete All Twitter DMs
At Once!
DM spam is a little like a bad infestation of cockroaches… it just keeps multiplying!
Now don’t get me wrong, some DMs are useful, relevant and important. That is the whole reason we can not straight up ignore our private message DM box regardless of how much we may like to due to the spam levels.
While I use Hootsuite to manage most of my twitter daily-work, every so often a one-shot-solution free tool delivers a quicker solution to a specific problem.
In this case, I’d not kept up with deleting my DMs and while I’d replied to the valid ones, the column was generally full of crap.
The 141 DMs had to go! (And I had no interest in deleting them one at a time!)
I scanned them to be sure there was nothing important (not surprised there was not) and then got out a handy dandy little tool known as “DM Deleter” …. “DM Cleaner”.
Introducing DM Cleaner!
You can imagine that going through this account by hand and manually deleting all of these suckers would have been both time consuming and annoying. That’s why I wanted a one-click solution that would delete all the DMs with no fuss!
I know this looks like a huge post but seriously it will only take you a few minutes to use. I simply broke down the steps.
How To Use DM Cleaner to Delete
All Your Twitter DMs At Once
Step 1: Go to the DM Cleaner Page.
Step 2. Use the “Sign in with Twitter” button to connect DM Cleaner to your Twitter Account.
Step 3. Sign into Twitter if necessary and then click Authorize App.
Step 4. Once you are back on the DM Cleaner page. You will now see it momentarily “thinking” and then it will report how many received and sent DMs it sees you currently have stored.
Step 5. Now you will see some options listed that let you decide WHICH DMs you want to delete. In my case, I chose “Delete all DMs”.
You can also selectively delete DMs based on who sent them and on text they contain. Very powerful.
Step 6. Click the “Apply” button and let it do it’s thing. It will take a few minutes to run and can delete a couple hundred at a time. (If you have more than that, simply run it again and blame the limit on Twitter!)
7. If you’re using Hootsuite or similar to view your DMs, you will need to reload the page that hootsuite is open in for it to refresh and see what DMs do or don’t still exist. (If some remain, just re-run the DM Cleaner app until Hootsuite shows them as all gone.) Easy Peasey!
Minor bug: If you need to run the app multiple times, don’t be surprised if it continues to report finding the same number of DMs existing. It’s just a display bug. Use Hootsuite (or similar) to show you what is actually remaining. The tool works fine but something in displaying a new count just doesn’t work on the later runs. No big deal.
Summary of DM Cleaner
A quick, simple little tool for twitter that gives you the power to delete all your spam-box… err I mean DM box at one time!
You may never need this little application but now you know it’s here if you do! This account would not have been such a mess if I’d been monitoring keeping up with deleting them as they came in!
What are some of your favorite twitter applications? Which twitter application would you absolutely have a fit about if it went away tomorrow? Lets compare notes below in the comment section!
Original Post Date: June 28th, 2010
Refresh Date: July 30th, 2013