The public expected it, Twitter did it. The social network has just added the ability to search the content of direct messages – or DMs – in its Android and iOS mobile applications. Previously, users could only search for the names of DM participants and the names of group chats they participated in.
Now, Twitter has extended the search function to all body text of DMs sent or received. Search also lets you specify whether you’re looking for a user’s name, group name, or message content to limit results when the query is an ambiguous word.
DM search launched in the iOS version of the Twitter app in 2019, but wasn’t introduced to Android until mid-2021.
Early feedback from users who have tried this new feature suggests that it does a good job of localizing text in conversations. However, the results are limited only to recent years. Twitter didn’t specify until when the DM conversations would be searchable, and the time limit also appears to affect searches for usernames or group chat titles.
The launch of the highly anticipated feature comes weeks after Twitter extended its Birdwatch fact-checking service to new users, and about a month after introducing new cryptocurrency payment methods for “donations”.