Twitter handles notifications for one account across all platforms pretty conveniently. Like all other social media platforms, it knows when you have already received certain information. This then allows the rest of your other alternative hardware to adjust in almost real time. Occasionally, however, Twitter will be persistent in showing notifications that shouldn’t be there. So, why is Twitter showing notifications that aren’t there?
This is primarily due to conflicting user settings, allowing only partial filtering for certain content. Another culprit may be the app’s cache, disabling loaded messages, or even changes that would instantly make the last notification no longer accessible.
Is there a way to constantly keep my Twitter open for notifications? Would the issue return again sometime later after clearing the cache? How do you make Twitter stop sending non-existent notifications? All answers to those and more are below.
Why Is There a ‘1’ on Twitter Icon When You Don’t Have a Notification?
When the notification source on Twitter can’t be found, something is likely preventing the original message to be accessed. Here are the top usual culprits:
Deletion
The notification might have reached your Twitter app, but the original message was immediately deleted (either by the poster or by the system). If you attempt to look at your timeline, the message will no longer be there, despite the notification counter registering a number.
Immediate drastic changes
The notification might be immediately edited to the point that the original message has effectively disappeared. Usually, the notification will still appear on the timeline, but simply changed as you refresh the information. But at certain times, you’ll find the list empty, with the original message nowhere to be found.
Notifications cannot be loaded
Something in your app might be preventing the notifications from appearing in the first place. The typical suspect for this is the app cache, which can be muddled with data to the point that conflicting information starts to appear.
Conflicting user settings
There might be a different set of permissions that you have accidentally configured on the app. For example, if notifications are set to show only when being mentioned in tweets, the system could falsely prevent messages from appearing in the timeline. Or if somebody tweets or mentions a user to create a second badge it clears the hidden archived one when set to the same notification setting.
Why Do You Get Notifications on Twitter from Accounts You Don’t Follow?
Simply put, when Twitter deems content relevant enough for your general interest, the system may automatically add the notification to your timeline. Take note of the word may. Twitter may not always do this per se. But the frequency should be enough that its users are encouraged to check out other notifications within the sphere of their interests.
According to Twitter’s timeline tutorial, this was a conscious design choice to make the timeline dynamically relevant and interesting. [1] Much like YouTube recommendations, this also means that you don’t have to manually search accounts and specific tweets every single time you use Twitter.
The obvious disadvantage of this, of course, would be the potentially endless number of notifications that the user has to deal with every single time, even after applying several filtering options. But at least if you are new to Twitter, you can get your grounds pretty wide in a short amount of time using this feature.
How to Clear Notifications on Twitter?
Unfortunately, Twitter does not provide a direct way to completely delete all notifications on your timeline. However, you can at least add filters, and these could remove some notifications depending on the type of filters you want to turn on:
- Quality filter – filters low-quality content from the user’s notifications. Low-quality content in this situation is defined as content that does not offer much variety to the user’s experience. The most straightforward example of this is duplicate tweets, or tweets that contain exactly the same information/source.
- Advanced filter – adds more specific options to the types of accounts or nature of messages that your app would allow to appear. This gives you far more granular control, and can potentially block out harmful notifications from appearing. But again, this cannot remove all notifications in one swoop.
How to Turn Off Twitter Notifications?
There are several methods of turning off notifications for Twitter, namely:
Bell icon method
- Go to the profile menu
- Select the bell icon on the top right, this will reveal a pop-out menu.
- Select either “None” or “Off”, depending on which option is available for the device you are currently using.
Manual selection method
- Select your profile avatar or menu icon
- Open the “Settings and Privacy” menu
- Under that menu, go to “Notifications”
- Select “Push notifications” under it, then select “Tweets”
- You will then be shown a list of accounts you are set to receive notifications. Manually select the accounts that you wish to disable notifications.
- Select either “None” or “Off” to finalize the decision.
The “No Retweets” method
- Go once more to your profile avatar or menu icon
- Open the “Settings and Privacy” menu once again
- Under that menu, go to “Notifications”, then select “Preferences”
- Select the option to turn off notifications for retweets
Time restriction method
- Like last time, go to profile avatar/menu icon, then open “Settings and Privacy”
- Under that menu, go to “Mobile”
- If the mobile number for that phone is already added, you should see a set the time interval option
- Set the length of time you want notifications to be turned off (like, at night, for example)
- Don’t forget to select “Save Changes” afterward
Mute notifications method
- Follow the usual steps to get to the “Settings and Privacy”, and “Notification” option
- Below “Quality filter” and “Advanced filters”, select the “Muted” option
- Toggle slide the type of notifications that you wish to mute on or off
How to Turn Off Push Notifications on Twitter?
If you feel like specific pop-up messages should also be turned off, here are a few more additional instructions:
- Go to the “Settings and Privacy” menu of your respective device/browser/app
- Under that menu, select “Notifications”, if you’re on Windows or a Mac, you need to also select “Preferences” after that
- Then, select “Push Notifications”. You will be given a slide bar on the left side to turn the option on or off.
