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How to switch your Twitter feed to a chronological timeline

How to switch your Twitter feed to a chronological timeline

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Look for the sparkle

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Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Twitter’s non-chronological timeline was always a bit controversial. After all, the beauty of Twitter is that things are happening in real time, and what’s the point of reading through Twitter if you’re not discovering things as they are occurring?

Whatever reasons Twitter had for implementing this policy, it decided to reverse its course back in late 2018 and allowed users to opt back into a chronological Twitter feed. The keyword here is “opt in” — you still have to manually elect this option to read Twitter the classic way. Here’s how to turn it on.

  • Open your Twitter app. If you’ve ever wondered about that sparkly icon on the upper right corner is, well, that’s your magic button.
  • Tap it and you’ll get the option to “See latest Tweets instead.”

It’s as easy as that. On the web, you’ll Immediately see the difference. To refresh your feed and see tweets chronologically on your mobile app, either close your app fully and reopen it, or tap the home icon on the lower left corner (there should be a dot over the icon now that indicates new tweets have arrived.) You can also tap the home icon then drag down your feed to manually refresh the stream.

If you decide that chronological just isn’t for you, you can always head back to the sparkle icon and revert to the top tweets feature to get tweets Twitter recommends for you.

This feature is now available for Android, iOS, and the web version of Twitter.