How to Mute or Unfollow Someone on Twitter

Let’s face it… Social media is a noisy place.

And if you’re following a lot of people on a platform like Twitter, where users often share multiple posts per day, it can feel overwhelming. Your feed will quickly get flooded with new tweets, making it rather difficult to keep up. Sometimes, it causes you to miss updates from the people you’re most interested in.

So, what are you to do? Well, one great tip is to organize those you follow into Twitter Lists to cut down on the noise. This way, you can focus on the people who are most important to you. However, sometimes you just need to press that mute button or go for the unfollow.

How to Mute or Unfollow Someone on Twitter

For those of you who are new to Twitter, you might not be sure what it means to mute someone. And you might not know how to unfollow those you no longer want to see tweets from. Luckily, this handy guide is going to break it all down for you!

What It Means to “Mute” Someone & How to Silence Their Tweets

When you mute someone on Twitter, it prevents their tweets from showing up in your feed without you having to unfollow that person. You may choose to mute rather than unfollow someone on Twitter because you just might want a break from seeing their posts. (Or maybe you know that person will post spoilers of your favorite TV show you’ve yet to watch!)

Either way, muting really comes in handy because you can silence anyone you want without them ever finding out. The person you mute will never be notified, so there’s no risk of offending anyone. And you can unmute at any time you’d like. Here’s how with an example using my profile:

First, navigate to the profile of the person you wish to mute. In the row with the follow button, notifications, and direct message, you’ll notice three little dots. Click it and you’ll see a drop-down menu that pops up with a few different options (shown below).

In that drop-down menu, you’ll see the option to mute the account. All you have to do is click it and that person’s tweets will stop showing up in your feed. And when you’re ready to unmute (if you ever are), you can follow these exact same steps.

Side note: I hope you enjoy my tweets and do not ever mute me.

You can also mute someone directly in the home feed by clicking on the down arrow in the top right-hand side. This will bring up a menu with various tasks, including the option to mute. It’s as simple as that! And it can be done without ever leaving your home page.

But that’s not all! Let’s say your phone is blowing up with notifications for a single conversation and you just want to shut it down for a bit. Instead of turning off all of your Twitter notifications or silencing everyone who is posting in the conversation thread, you can actually silence just that conversation instead. By doing this, you will still be able to see everything that was posted in the conversation, you just won’t receive a notification for every new tweet that’s shared. This way, you can finally get some peace and quiet and you won’t return to Twitter bombarded with updates.

To silence a single conversation, click on the down arrow on the top right-hand side of the tweet. A drop-down menu will appear and you’ll see the option to “Mute this conversation.” Click that and it’ll silence all notifications for this convo moving forward. Then, you can follow these same steps to unmute the conversation later on should you wish to do so.

Two Simple Ways to Unfollow Someone on Twitter

Maybe you don’t want to just mute someone… Maybe you’d rather unfollow and bid that account farewell. That’s fine too! When it comes to social media, we have every right to follow whoever we want. And if you find an account is no longer of interest to you, you can unfollow that person without having to feel guilty about it.

When you unfollow someone on Twitter, that person will not be notified once you’ve taken action. They will, however, be able to see you’re no longer following them when they view your profile. In the screenshot above, you can see that Twitter includes “Follows you” next to the username of anyone who follows your account. But unless someone actually checks your profile or uses some sort of third party tool to be notified of unfollows, they won’t know right off the bat. So, here’s what you would do if you want to unfollow someone:

One way is to visit the user’s profile and locate the “Following” button at the top. It will be blue if you have your account’s customizations set to the default Twitter color. When you hover over the button, it turns red and changes to “Unfollow.” You can see this in the screenshot above. Hit the button and you can unfollow someone on Twitter with a single click.

Another option is to unfollow someone directly from your home feed. Let’s say you’re scrolling along, reading posts, and you find a tweet from an account you no longer want to see posts from… Simply click the down arrow in the top right-hand side and a drop-down menu will appear. The option to unfollow will be among them. Simply click it and you’re all done!

Call to Action:

• Don’t be afraid to take control of your account and who you follow. This is your space and you should follow those you really have an interest in!
• Conduct an audit of your account by viewing the list of people you follow. Mute or unfollow someone on Twitter as needed so you can clear out any clutter.