Twitter, after more than a year of testing, announced the addition of direct message (DM) keyword search. The feature, now rolling out to web and apps, let users locate specific mentions within the text of any DM to track down past conversations, links shared, and products and people mentioned.
Users can simply enter a word from the message they’re looking for.
It used to be that only people’s names or the titles of groups could be searched for with the DM search feature in the past. Adding this new feature makes it a lot easier for people to find not just contacts, but also messages.
A quick test shows that a keyword search will return not just the conversation in which it appears, but multiple mentions within that conversation.
One limitation as pointed out by the Verge: it appears as though DM search didn’t return any results for conversations older than 2020. So if you were hoping for a search function that went through your entire history, you’re out of luck unless Twitter improves this.