How to Delete X Account Forever in Easy Steps
The thirty-day window, what to download before you start, and the subscriptions and connected apps to cancel first.
Download your archive first
Go to Settings and privacy > Your account > Download an archive of your data. X queues up the archive and sends you a link to download, taking several hours. The only record of your Posts, Direct Messages, Lists and follower data ever will be this Archive. Everything you have written is deleted after thirty days, so if you miss the window… sorry your data is gone. Once deactivating you will not be able to log into start the download,hence request the archive before doing anything.
Once you ask for the archive, identify which email address obtains the link. If it does not arrive within 24 hours, check your spam folder. The archive includes an HTML index page along with the data folder in a zip file. Open the index page in your browser to browse through your local posts and messages. After it is deleted, keep this file on a safe place, because you cannot ask for it again after your account was eliminated.
Cancel subscriptions and disconnect apps
X Premium, Super Follows and any subscription that is billed through X also need to be cancelled individually as deactivation does not cancel them. Go to Settings, and then privacy, Premium & then manage your subscription. Cancel it there. If you subscribed through the Apple App Store or Google Play store, cancel using those stores. If you forget a subscription, it will bill you after the account has been destroyed, and then there's nothing you can do about it because you can't log back into your account to fix it.
Review third-party apps using your X account to sign in. Choose Settings and privacy, then Safety and account entry, then Applications and sessions. Revoke all access for all apps Repeat for any service where you signed in with X — the logins of those accounts break as soon as you delete X, and risk a permanent loss of the ability to use those services. Disconnect any bank or payment accounts you might have tied to it was through X so that there are no issues authenticating later on.
Deactivate your account
Navigate to the Settings and privacy tab, select Your account, and click on Deactivate your account. X presents a confirmation screen describing what deactivation is. So after that, you read it, then insert your lock screen password and tap the confirm button. Your profile is hidden from view, your posts are no longer publicly visible and the thirty-day deletion countdown begins. This cannot be undone, however if the account holder signs in at any point during the 30 days, the account will reactivate and deletion cancelled.
Once you verify, log out of X on all devices. Get rid of the app from your mobile phone. While waiting, whether your deletion was successful, do not log back in for any reason. Logging in resets count, the thirty-day clock. If you are serious about deletion, that thirty-day window needs to be observed as a blackout period where no X link or notification is viewed.
What happens after thirty days
After 30 days, we then permanently delete the account and its associated content in our active systems. The handle is immediately available for someone to register. X deletes the account name, profile picture and all their posts from its servers. It also removes direct messages that you both sent and received, though copies of those screenshots may still exist in the recipient inboxes of other users who have not deleted their accounts. According to X, because of standard data retention practices some data stays in backups and server logs for a time after information is deleted (as well as legally-required auditor records).
Your content elsewhere outside X is unaffected. Search engine caches, the Wayback Machine, screenshots other people have taken or shares in other places live forever where they currently exist. No, you cannot remove X from third-party services. Your posts that were quoted or embedded elsewhere continue to exist there. Then, do not expect that everything you posted ever will be completely removed — this is true for any account you delete on the internet, and not just X.
What actually stays visible
Just because your X account is erased with no chance of getting it back, does not mean that what you posted disappears from the internet. That did not erase the copies of your writing that other users quoted or retweeted. This means published news articles and blog post embedding one of your tweets that were subsequently deleted still work from the Wayback Machine or cached version. Your profile pic and handle may appear in screenshots from others to share. Your search results for your X username may eventually fade, but not immediately.
Your direct messages (DM) to other users will continue to fall within their inboxes even after your account deletes. Your handle and profile pic from the time the messages were sent still appears in those messages. Well, your account is non-existent thus he cannot reply to you but still the history of the conversation remains with him. If you wanted to go through the direct messages and have any of your own deleted, you'd have to delete each in isolation before deactivating – otherwise, the recipient side would keep a copy still.
The second-best that most of the people actually want
A lot of people erase the account when what they wanted was to erase the history and keep the handle. Instead, keeping your name, your followers and the conversations that need to be kept intact; delete the posts. X does not allow you to bulk delete by date range, which is why you need a tool like TweetSweep that runs with your downloaded archive. You simply upload the archive, specify your date range and the tool goes through all posts matching within X's API limit of fifty deletions every fifteen minutes.
This way, the account remains a live working account and you can remove all those posts that are just not representative of your brand anymore. All this means that your handle stays yours, you stay connected with your followers, and your future posts are still there. You don't lose access to any service that relies on your X login. It takes longer than a delete operation because of the rate-limit, but gives you granular control over what remains and what gets removed. Cleared history is the real intention for most users, not the whole account.