Twitter has evolved into more than just a social news website, with over 500 million tweets being posted daily. People use it to get daily news, weather, politics and all kinds of general jokes.
While a large chunk of Twitter is made up of users who just chat and tweet whatever comes to mind, there are many reasons why you might be interested in a particular user’s tweets. For me, that was when the official Twitter account of the game I follow started regularly tweeting free Steam keys. This is what I want to draw your attention to!
Whether it’s breaking the news, getting free gifts early, or giving a little extra attention to your significant other, there are many reasons Twitter notifications can be useful.
In this article, let’s take a look at how to enable notifications for individual Twitter accounts, both online and mobile.
How to get Twitter notifications on the web
Twitter’s built-in web notifications have been something of an anomaly since their launch. Several versions of Chrome and Firefox tell users that their browser does not support this feature. This is a serious problem.
However, there is a reliable service that can help solve such problems: IFTTT. We’ve covered how to use IFTTT in the past, so read this article if you are not familiar with this service.
To create notifications for tweets, let’s start by creating a new IFTTT applet using the Tweet from Search trigger. You can skip all the menu navigation and go straight to this page by clicking here
To receive Twitter notifications, let’s start by creating a new IFTTT applet from Twitter. That being said, there are two trigger actions that are best suited for what we’re trying to accomplish: a new tweet from a specific user and a new tweet from search.
Finding tweets from a specific user is self-explanatory – the trigger is triggered every time one user sends a tweet. This is very useful for simple purposes. However, it is much more convenient to search for tweets from search.
First of all, search for tweets is limited to 15 results per check. How often IFTTT polls for updates is a cryptic variable. Although the applet’s settings indicate how often to check, this can be from a few seconds to 15 minutes.
Keep this in mind when creating your search query. Using the OR and AND operators, you can group multiple searches into one. However, you may not want to do this unless you want the check limit to be less than 15 results.
However, we’ve covered how advanced Twitter search is in another article, and you can use these tips to create the perfect search term on this page.
As mentioned above, you can use a search term to combine basic searches for multiple users, for example:
from: onlinetechtips OR from: c89
You can also narrowly filter tweets for specific keywords, for example:
from: toejamandearl “xbox code”
Once you’ve decided which search term to use, save the trigger. Now you need to figure out how to receive Twitter notifications.
Here are some examples of “that†services that can notify you when a trigger is triggered:
- Android SMS: connects to your Android phone and allows you to send SMS to any number (can be used in tandem with a Google Voice number and the Google Voice notification extension).
- Facebook Messenger: Sends a Facebook message.
- Gmail: Sends an email to itself.
- Notifications: Sends a notification to your IFTTT connected devices.
- Phone Call: Calls your number (US only) to leave voicemail.
- Slack: Submits a message to the channel.
Additionally, IFTTT supports services like Pushbullet and Pushover, which act as ways to aggregate all of your Twitter notifications across devices. This can help you get notifications on your desktop, Chromebook, and other non-mobile gadgets.
Although IFTTT is not ideal due to the small latency in verification, its flexibility helps to compensate. You can be notified of tweets in a variety of interesting ways.
How to get Twitter notifications on mobile
Since IFTTT offers a mobile app that includes triggered actions like sending SMS or push notifications, this is also a smart solution for smartphone users. If you want to receive mobile notifications from search tweets, this is your only option.
However, unlike web notifications, Twitter’s mobile notifications feature is fully functional. If you want to enable tweet notifications for a specific user, all you have to do is go to their profile and do a few clicks.
- If you are using a smartphone, you can go to the user’s profile and click the bell icon to the left of the Follow / Subscribe button.
- If you are using a browser, find the same Follow / Follow button in the user’s profile.
- Click the kabob menu icon (three vertical dots).
- Select Enable Mobile Notifications.
If you decide to turn off mobile notifications again, you can follow the same instructions for any platform.
Now that you know how to receive Twitter notifications on your computer, laptop, smartphone, and any other device, there is no excuse for missing one tweet you’ve been waiting for weeks.
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