Twitter has increased the 140-character limit to 280
This feature is not available for all users
Using this guide you can enable it now
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Twitter has always been about brevity, but the company appears to be loosening its strict 140-character limit for every tweet. As an experimental feature the company has allowed some people to use up to 280 characters per tweet. Like every major change to products lots of people use, this one has proved to be polarising. Some people love it while others just don’t. No matter which side of the debate you are on, you can try the feature for yourself and decide whether you like it. If Twitter has enabled it on your account, fantastic. If not, these steps will help you double the character count of each of your tweets.
How to tweet 280 characters on Twitter.com
If you are on Google Chrome, follow these steps:
Open Tweetdeck and sign in with your Twitter account.
Click View > Developer > Developer tools
Click the Sources tab.
Now click on the > button and select Snippets.
Click New Snippet.
Now go to this Github page and copy the code you see there. Alternatively you can copy it right here:
Now paste this code in the box to the right side of the New Snippet button.
Click the Play icon.
Now click the new tweet button in Tweetdeck and voila! You’ll see that the character limit is now 280. Go ahead and tweet your heart out.
If you are on Firefox, follow these steps:
Open Firefox and sign in to Twitter via Tweetdeck.
Click Tools > Web developer > Web console.
The console will show up on the bottom half of the page. Right at the bottom, you’ll see an icon that looks like this >. Click the space to its right. This is where you need to paste the code.
But first, you need to tell Firefox that you know what you are doing. Type allow paste. This will allow you to paste the code — it’s a simple security measure to prevent people from accidentally messing up their browser.
Now paste the code from this page or you can copy it from above. Hit Enter.
That’s it, you can now start tweeting 280-character tweets.
If you are on Safari, follow these steps:
First, you need to enable the Develop menu in Safari. Click Safari on the menu bar at the top and then click on Preferences.
Now go to the Advanced tab and make sure that Show Develop menu in menu bar is enabled.
Then you need to click Develop in the menu bar at the top and click on Show Javascript Console.
Paste the same code we’ve used for Chrome and Firefox. You can find it here and hit Enter.
That’s it, you can now start tweeting 280-character tweets.
If all this sounds too complicated, follow this alternative method to start posting 280-character tweets. Note that this involves installing a Google Chrome extension, so it should work on Chrome and Opera:
Start tweeting and you’ll see that you can tweet up to 280 characters. Just ignore the number 140 that shows up under the new tweet box. You will be able to tweet 280 characters.
That’s the simplest method to start tweeting 280 characters per tweet. Do you like this new feature? Let us know via the comments. For more tutorials, visit our How To section.