How to search your Twitter timeline

Twitter images on iPhone
Twitter images on iPhone (Image credit: iMore)

When you're trying to find tweets about a specific topic on your timeline, it can be a nightmare sorting through all the tweets from friends, celebrities, news sources, and everyone else you follow on Twitter. While you can search Twitter with the search bar, that searches the entirety of Twitter, but what if you want to search specifically your timeline on Twitter? The Twitter user @twostraws tweeted out this little Twitter hack that @mergesort told him that lets you do just that.

Using this little trick, you'll be able to search your Twitter timeline for specific topics or terms, so you'll only see Tweets and retweets from the people you follow that relate to your search term. Here's how you do it.

How to search your Twitter timeline

To do this nifty little trick, you need to know what to put into the Twitter search bar. The magic code is filter:follows filter:nativeretweets followed by your search term. So, if you wanted to search your timeline for the term iPhone, you would enter filter:follows filter:nativeretweets iPhone.

Pro tip: You can use this trick with any version of Twitter. It works on the official Twitter apps for iPhone and iPad, and you can do it on the web version. All you have to do is enter the code and your search term into the search bar, and you're off to the races.

  1. Launch Twitter from your Home screen.
  2. Tap the Search tab.
  3. Enter filter:follows filter:nativeretweets [[ search term ]] in the search bar.

Searching Twitter Timeline: Launch Twitter, tap the search tab, and then enter the text in the search bar. (Image credit: iMore)

There you have it, now all you should be seeing is tweets from your timeline that contain the search term.

Any questions?

Let us know in the comments down below.

Luke Filipowicz
Staff Writer

Luke Filipowicz has been a writer at iMore, covering Apple for nearly a decade now. He writes a lot about Apple Watch and iPad but covers the iPhone and Mac as well. He often describes himself as an "Apple user on a budget" and firmly believes that great technology can be affordable if you know where to look. Luke also heads up the iMore Show — a weekly podcast focusing on Apple news, rumors, and products but likes to have some fun along the way. 

Luke knows he spends more time on Twitter than he probably should, so feel free to follow him or give him a shout on social media @LukeFilipowicz.