How to turn off ‘Show me the best Tweets first’ in Twitter

4 min readMay 12, 2016

I get perturbed when social networks exert more and more control over what I see in my timeline, and the order in which I see it.

Twitter has joined the fray, adding a feature that defaults your account to displaying the “best” Tweets first in the Timeline.

Harrumph.

The reason I follow people is so I can see their Tweets in the order in which they post them, not the order Twitter thinks I want to see them. Anyone with me?

Thankfully, there’s a way around it. This illustrated tutorial will show you how to turn off the “Show me the best Tweets first” feature. Instructions are included for desktop computers, iOS and Android.

Desktop computer instructions

In the upper right-hand corner of your screen, click on the thumbnail image of your profile picture.

From the dropdown menu, select “Settings.”

How to view your Twitter Timeline in chronological order | Blogging Bistro

From the left-hand sidebar, click “Account.”

Find the “Content” area and within that, locate the “Timeline” section:

You’ll notice that the box is checked by default, which means Twitter will show you “Tweets you are more likely to care about first in your timeline.”

To turn it off and instead show your followers’ Tweets in chronological order, click inside the box to uncheck it. Then click the blue “Save changes” button.

A popup dialogue box will prompt you to enter your password to confirm the change.

Enter your password and click “Save changes.”

You have the option to switch back to showing the “best” Tweets first; just go through the same process, and check the box that says, “Show me the best Tweets first.”

iOS instructions

On your profile, tap the gear icon.

Select “Settings.”

Tap the account whose settings you’d like to adjust.

Under Timeline, tap “Timeline personalization.”

Next to “Show me the best Tweets first,” tap to turn it off.

Android instructions

Tap the “overflow” icon.

Tap “Settings.”

Tap “Timeline.”

Next to “Show me the best Tweets first,” uncheck the box to turn it off.

How Twitter determines which Tweets they think you care about

Twitter’s Help Center explains that they choose the “best” Tweets based on accounts you interact with most, Tweets you engage with, “and much more.”

They don’t reveal what the “much more” is.

Question

Do you prefer allowing social networks to decide which content displays in your Timeline, or do you want to see it all, in chronological order? Would love to hear from you.