This tool helps you trim your follow list on Twitter

Twitter is a mess, but it’s still addictive. While some folks might have headed to Mastadon, those who stick around might still want to get the best out of the bird site. If you feel that your timeline is very cluttered, a new tool named Prune your follows can really help with that.

The app shows you the people you follow in largely four categories: Overpopular (most followed), Underpopular (least followed), Overactive (accounts that tweet a lot) and Unactive [sic] (accounts that tweet only a few times a year). You can quickly unfollow accounts that you think are not worth following anymore. The app also lets you see all accounts you unfollowed through the app via a side menu.

The tools are made by Norway-based developer Queen Raae, who told TechCrunch over Twitter DM that she built Prune your follows because she was reaching the follow limit on the platform.

“I hit the 5000 followers limit (after almost 16 years on Twitter) and had a hard time finding an account to unfollow. Twitter has only one view of the accounts you follow, with the most recently followed on top. So I got the idea to build something for myself,” she said.

The tool is pretty neat, but Twitter enforces its own API limitations. An app can facilitate 50 unfollows per 15 minutes, and 500 unfollows in total for a day. If the app hits the limit, you can still click on the individual profile and unfollow them on Twitter.

Raae said to overcome this limit, she is experimenting with multiple features. One possibility is to display a total counter on the website or stagger the access to the tool. She’s also contemplating a feature that lets people add Twitter accounts to a list. Later, they can open that list on Twitter and unfollow the accounts in one go.

She added that early users have demanded that they want to see more filters like the number of interactions with that account and a list of accounts that don’t follow them back. What’s more, Raae said another idea for future development is to introduce a customized filter so users can search for something like “Show me all web3 accounts with less than 3000 followers.”

Some of these problems could be easily solved if Twitter tweaked its API, but the Elon Musk-led company has already shut down multiple developer-related initiatives, including Twitter Toolbox. Earlier this month, the company’s former head of developer platform, Amir Shevat, wrote a story for TechCrunch detailing the state of affairs at Twitter. He said only two out of a 100-people team are still at Twitter when it comes to developer platforms. So, rather than improvements for developers, it’s reasonable to expect more tightening of platform rules — meaning it might be best to use this app while you can.