How to disable Twitter's Quality Filter

Twitter uses a quality filter for notifications and search results; it is designed to filter out low(er)-quality content so that users of the service can focus their attention on the remaining content.

While it can certainly be useful to filter out low quality content automatically, for instance, if it can be identified clearly as spam or automated content, other content may be filtered as part of the process.

Twitter users won't see that content even if it is relevant to them if they don't disable the quality filter on the site.

Twitter notes that the quality filter won't filter "notifications from people you follow or accounts you've recently interacted with". Still, it may be a good idea to find out what is blocked when the filter is active by disabling it for a period of time.

Disable Twitter's Quality Filter

All user searches on Twitter use the quality filter, and the same is true for notifications. You can disable the filter when you run searches.

Twitter displays a "search filters" widget on the search results page that you may activate to control filter use and other parameters.

Just click on "show" next to search filters to display the options. You can make changes to the target language, location, and users there and turn the quality filter off.

A click on "quality filter on" displays the option to turn it off. Twitter reloads the search results page right away and uses the new filter setting.

Note that Twitter won't save the change; any new search you perform has the quality filter set to on again. There is no option -- none that I could find at the very least -- that disables the quality filter permanently for searches on Twitter.

You can append &qf=off to the URL, however, to set the filter to off automatically, e.g. https://twitter.com/search?q=test&src=typd&qf=off.

Android

If you use the official Twitter application for Android, you may do the following to disable search quality filters for the active search:

1. Run a search to get to a search results page.
2. Tap on the icon on the right of the search field at the top.
3. Tap on the checkmark next to quality filter to turn it off.
4. Click on apply.

Disabling the Quality Filter in the Timeline

Twitter rolled out the quality filter for user timelines in 2016. The filter works identical to the one used by search: it blocks any content that Twitter's algorithm classify as content below a certain quality threshold.

You can turn that filter off permanently. Here is how that is done:

1. Click on the profile icon and select Settings and privacy from the context menu.
2. Switch to notifications. If you have troubles finding the options load the following URL directly as it takes you to the right page in the settings as well: https://twitter.com/settings/notifications_timeline
3. Remove the checkmark from the Quality filter box under advanced.
4. Click on save changes.

Twitter disables the quality filter for the timeline from that moment on. You can turn it back on at any time by repeating the steps and making sure the box is checked before you hit the save changes button.

Android

You can turn off the timeline quality filter in the Twitter Android application as well. Just follow these steps to do so:

1. Open the Twitter application on your Android device.
2. Tap on the profile icon.
3. Select "settings and privacy" in the menu that opens.
4. Select notifications on the main settings and privacy page.
5. Remove the checkmark from the quality filter setting.