Twitter is working on letting you remove yourself from unwanted conversations

Twitter
Twitter (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • Twitter appears to be working on a feature that will allow people to remove themselves from conversations.
  • The new feature is different to muting a conversation, a similar feature that's already available.

Twitter appears to be testing a feature that will allow people to remove themselves from conversations for the first time.

The move, which was first spotted by researcher Jane Manchun Wong, appears to include an onboarding screen that will tell people what to expect when they remove themselves from a conversation. According to that screenshot, removing yourself from a conversation will stop you from getting notifications — although you'll still be able to see the conversation should you want to.

  • Untag your username: Your username stays, but it'll be untagged from the original Tweet and all replies.
  • Stop future mentions: People can't mention you again in this conversation.
  • Stop notifications: You won't receive further notifications, but can still see the conversation.

While Twitter already allows people to mute a conversation, this new approach is different in that it will remove the link to a user's profile — preventing people from clicking through to it or just engaging you in a secondary conversation as The Verge rightly points out.

Twitter isn't saying anything about this latest discovery so there is not telling when, or if, this feature change will make its way to the masses. There's no denying it's a change that some people would benefit form, though. Especially those with large followings who sometimes find themselves stuck in the middle of a conversation they want no part in.

This feature, if it ships, will likely only be available via the official Twitter app, however. That's a shame — it isn't the best iPhone app for actually reading tweets — but is unfortunately par for the course these days.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.