What you need to know
- Twitter is adding a search bar to messaging on Android.
- This follows a similar feature added to iOS back in 2019.
- Today's update will let you find message threads, but a future update will add in message content search.
Twitter is making a small improvement to how direct messaging works on Android phones. It'll now allow users to search their message threads with a new search bar that lives at the top of the direct messaging screen. The same bar came to its iOS app and the web a couple of years back, but the company is finally bringing it to its Android app.
Once this rolls out, you'll be able to find any conversation in your direct messages inbox, as long as you know the name of the other party. If you'd chatted with Jeff from the bar two years ago, you'd normally have to scroll all the way down. This time, you can type in "Jeff", and watch the search bar do the rest of the work. The previous iOS-only iteration would only allow your most recent DMs, but Twitter's improved the range in the two years since it first launched.
We’ve brought the DM search bar to Android and are rolling out an improved version that lets you search for all of your old convos, not just the most recent ones.
Waiting for the option to search your DMs for message content? We’re working on releasing that later this year! https://t.co/wAQxSokJt6We’ve brought the DM search bar to Android and are rolling out an improved version that lets you search for all of your old convos, not just the most recent ones.
Waiting for the option to search your DMs for message content? We’re working on releasing that later this year! https://t.co/wAQxSokJt6— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 13, 2021May 13, 2021
The natural question is to ask whether the company plans on letting you search for message content like Messenger and WhatsApp allow you to. It doesn't yet do so, and this update isn't changing that. In the future, however, Twitter will roll out the ability to search your DMs for message content later in the year, but at least you don't need to endlessly scroll to find that one thread you've been looking for.
Twitter's DMs may be one of the company's most popular products, but they're still pretty atrocious at everything to do with actual messaging. Hopefully, changes like this are a sign that the company plans to focus on that side a bit more this year.
