I know this repo has been needing some love. If anyone is interested in taking ownership of this repo, please contact me! Either post a discussion or email me at mennaruuk at protonmail dot com.
Finding and downloading deleted Tweets takes a lot of time. Thankfully, with this tool, it becomes a piece of cake! 🎂
Twayback is a portmanteau of Twitter and the Wayback Machine. Enter your desired Twitter username, and let Twayback do the rest!
- Can download some or all of a user's archived deleted Tweets.
- Lets you extract Tweets text to a text file (yes, even quote retweets!)
- Has ability to screenshot deleted Tweets.
- Allows custom time range to narrow search for deleted Tweets archived between two dates.
- Differentiates between accounts that are active, suspended, or don't/no longer exist.
- Lets you know if a target handle's archived Tweets have been excluded from the Wayback Machine.
- Saves a log of the deleted tweet URLs in case you want to view on the Wayback Machine
twayback -u USERNAME [OPTIONS]
-u, --username Specify target user's Twitter handle
--batch-size Specify how many URLs you would like to
examine at a time. Expecting an integer between
1 and 100. A larger number will give you a speed
boost but at the risk of errors. Default = 100
--semaphore-size Specify how many urls from --batch-size you would
like to query asyncronously at once. Expecting an integer
between 1 and 50. A larger number number will give you a speed
boost but at the risk of errors. Default = 50
-from, --fromdate Narrow search for deleted Tweets *archived*
on and after this date
(can be combined with -to)
(format YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY/MM/DD
or YYYYMMDD, doesn't matter)
-to, --todate Narrow search for deleted Tweets *archived*
on and before this date
(can be combined with -from)
(format YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY/MM/DD
or YYYYMMDD, doesn't matter)
Examples:
twayback -u taylorswift13 Downloads all of @taylorswift13's
deleted Tweets
twayback -u jack -from 2022-01-05 Downloads all of @jack's
deleted Tweets
*archived* since January 5,
2022 until now
twayback -u drake -to 2022/02/09 Downloads all of @drake's
deleted Tweets *archived*
since the beginning until
February 9, 2022
twayback -u EA -from 2020-08-30 -to 2020-09-15 Downloads all of @EA's
deleted Tweets *archived*
between August 30, 2020 to
September 15, 2020
- Download the latest EXE file.
- Launch Command Prompt in the EXE file's directory.
- Run the command
twayback -u USERNAME(ReplaceUSERNAMEwith your target handle).
- Download the latest Python script ZIP file.
- Extract ZIP file to a directory of your choice.
- Open terminal in that directory.
- Run the command
pip install -r requirements.txt. - Run the command
twayback.py -u USERNAME(ReplaceUSERNAMEwith your target handle).
- You can also install Twayback in the following way:
git clone https://github.com/Mennaruuk/twayback
- You can also use Python Virtualenv (Virtual Environment) in order to avoid conflicting packages | libs
cd twayback
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
depending on versions
pip install -r requirements.txt
Run the command:
python3 twayback.py -u USERNAME
(Replace USERNAME with your target handle).
For more information, check out the Usage section above.
(I'm aware that screenshots for pre-2016 Tweets aren't working. I'm currently trying my best to fix it, but I've been running into errors. As soon as I fix it, I will ship a version that works for all Tweets. Thanks for your patience!)
Screenshots are done using Playwright. To successfully take screenshots, please follow these steps:
- Open a terminal window.
- Run:
playwright install.
The larger the number of tweets your query has the higher your chances of encountering errors during execution. The default speed settings for --semaphore-size and --batch-size are set to the fastest possible execution. Reduce these numbers to slow down your execution and reduce the chance of errors.
- Quality of the HTML files depends on how the Wayback Machine saved them. Some are better than others.
- This tool is best for text. You might have some luck with photos. You cannot download videos.
- By definition, if an account is suspended or no longer exists, all their Tweets would be considered deleted.
- Custom date range is not about when Tweets were made, but rather when they were archived. For example, a Tweet from 2011 may have been archived today.
I welcome, and encourage, contributions! They make my day. What I can think of off the top of my head:
- Increasing download speed: It'd be nice to increase the speed at which files are downloaded.
requeststakes me 5 seconds to download a file in kilobytes. There exist faster alternatives to requests, such aspycURL,faster_than_requests, andurllib3. I haven't gotten them to successfully work. I just want to use the faster library to download the HTML files and parse the text, it's okay if the rest is done withrequests. - Code simplification/improvement: If you're a pro at Python and know better ways to do what's in the script, please feel free to do so! If it works well, if not better, I will most likely merge it 😃
- Error Handling: Set up error handling that would react to crashes. Potentially saving work as it goes and trying to restart from a certain point after a crash. For example: In a session if it crashed after checking the status of half of the URLs it would then restart itself and know to skip the URLs it has already checked this session.
- Use of Proxiese: Build in ability for users to set up list of proxy IPs to rotate through if traffic is being blocked or limited