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How to Register a Twitter App in 8 Easy Steps

Twitter Power Tools

One of the reasons that Twitter is so popular, and become what it is today, is due to the huge number of developers who have built apps over the years. Why so many developers? Basically because Twitter has been very easy to work with.

Many social networks and apps have their own interface that programmers can work with. These interfaces are called APIs (short for Application Programming Interface). Unfortunately Twitter have made quite a few changes recently which have made their API a lot more difficult to work with.

On June 11th, 2013, Twitter retired v.1 of their API and stopped offering RSS feeds. This has meant quite a few Twitter apps no longer work, and programmers have been scratching their heads, wondering what to do.

I wrote an article some time back about how to replace Twitter Triggers in IFTTT now that they're gone. In this article I showed how you could use the RSS feeds that Twitter offered to connect with other apps using the tool IFTTT. Unfortunately from the 11th June, this no longer works- because Twitter retired RSS feeds and now requires that any Twitter app is authenticated first. This is so that Twitter can keep a close eye on the use of it's API. This suddenly has raised the bar and made it far more complicated for developers to play with Twitter's data

I will show you how to get your RSS feeds back as well as do some other really cool things with Twitter in a future article. However, for now, I am going to show you how to start the process off- register your Twitter app. And I am going to attempt to make this as easy to understand as possible. I hope I succeed!

 

#1 Visit the Twitter Developers' Site

Twitter Developer website

 

The first thing you need to do is head on down to dev.twitter.com. In order to create an account, all you need to do is click on the "Sign In" link at the top right.

#2 Sign in with your Twitter Account

Twitter Developers Sign In

Next, sign in with the Twitter account you want to associate with your app. You do have a Twitter account don't you?!

#3 Go to apps.twitter.com

Manage your Apps

Once you're logged in, you will need to visit Twitter's app website. This can be found at apps.twitter.com (it can also be found by clicking "manage your apps" in the footer of the Twitter Developers site.

#4 Create a New Application

 

Create a Twitter App

If you are new to the Developers site you won't see any applications registered. Either way, it's time to create our first application. To do this, click on the big "Create a new application" button.

#5 Fill in your Application Details

create an application

It's been easy so far, but this screen often makes people confused. Don't worry, it's a lot easier than you think...

  • Name:
    First of all you need to give your app a unique name (one that no one else has used for their Twitter app). Since we're going to be an creating app for personal use and not one that other people can register and use, just put your domain name in or perhaps even your name.
  • Description:
    You don't have to worry much about the description- you can change this later, but it can help to distinguish this app from others that you might create in the future. I've put "a set of Twitter tools for personal use".
  • Website:
    Put your website in the website field. It's supposed to be your application's publicly accessible home page. However, if your app is for personal use, this isn't really applicable. I would just enter the website address where the app will be hosted.
  • Callback URL:
     I would ignore the Callback URL field. If you are allowing users to log into your app to authenticate themselves, you'd enter the URL where they would be returned after they've given permission to Twitter to use your app.

Once you've done this, make sure you've read the "Developer Rules Of The Road" blurb, check the "Yes, I agree" box, fill in the CAPTCHA (don't you just love them) and click the "create your Twitter Application" button. Hurrah!

#6 Create Your Access Token

Your Access Token

You'll then be presented with lots of information, but we're not quite done yet. We now need to authorise the Twitter app for your Twitter account. To do this, click the "Create my access token" button. This takes a few seconds, so if you don't see the access tokens on the next screen, you may have to refresh the page a few times.

This access token will allow your Twitter application to read Twitter information. You'll be able to get data of your tweets, mentions, lists and more. However, if you want to do more advanced stuff like sending tweets or deleting, you'll need to change your access type.

#7 Choose what Access Type You Need

application type

As I mentioned, the default access type when you create a Twitter app is read only. My recommendation is to keep it like this unless you really want to be able to have the app delete or write data (for example sending tweets or deleting direct messages). For our first Twitter app we will only need read only access, but so that you know for future, in order to change the access type, you need to click on the settings tab at the top of the screen. Once you do this, scroll down to where it says "Application Type". Change the access type to "Read and Write" to be able to read Twitter data and send tweets and select "Read, Write and access direct messages" if you want to also have access to your direct messages.

#8 Make a note of your OAuth Settings

oAuth Settings

Once you've done this, make a note of your OAuth settings. You will need these long horrible strings of characters for your Twitter app. The ones you will need are:

  • Consumer Key
  • Consumer Secret
  • OAuth Access Token
  • OAuth Access Token Secret

It goes without saying that you should keep these secret. If anyone was to get these keys, they could effectively access your Twitter account.


The Next Step- How to build your first App!

Armed with your Twitter app data, you can now go about creating your first Twitter app. I've written how to do just that in the next article called Build Your First Twitter App Using PHP in 8 Easy Steps. You will be able to access your tweets, mentions, direct messages and filter through them.

View Next Step

129 Comments

  1. Mike on November 7, 2019 at 11:53 am

    Hey Ian, this is a really thorough and informative tutorial. Great work.



  2. Mike Jones on October 16, 2019 at 7:05 am

    Thank you for this informative Read! I haven’t created a twitter app before but I think should give it a try now.



    • Ian Anderson Gray on November 2, 2019 at 12:19 pm

      Cool! Let me know how you get on!



  3. save from web on September 10, 2019 at 2:10 pm

    Is It compulsory to enter a website name while filling the form?



    • Ian Anderson Gray on November 2, 2019 at 2:00 pm

      Yes, it is, but it doesn’t matter what the website is. Ian



  4. Rupanjan on August 1, 2019 at 6:51 pm

    Nice article, we are trying to build an app which can post tweet from our website. You article is the first step to it.



  5. Shrik on July 26, 2019 at 11:35 am

    Hi, the steps have changed lately. they ask for detailed business case to authorise app development and allow access to the development account.



    • Ian Anderson Gray on July 26, 2019 at 12:24 pm

      Yes, unfortunately, they’re asking us to jump through a few more hoops.
      Frustrating!



  6. Oscar Nieto on June 25, 2019 at 3:24 pm

    8 easy step for twitter account register that is very helpful and easy for beginner person who want to use twitter account.



  7. Monirul on June 2, 2019 at 6:42 pm

    Really its easy now. thanks a lot



    • Ian Anderson Gray on June 3, 2019 at 8:24 am

      So, glad. Twitter development became unnecessarily difficult, and my aim is to make it as easy as possible! Ian



  8. Sri on April 2, 2019 at 3:30 am

    Hi…I have created a Twitter development app and hosted in my own demo website..but the app is not getting hosted in my website
    How long it will take for a newly created Twitter app to get approved



    • Ian Anderson Gray on April 8, 2019 at 7:26 am

      Hi Sri. To be honest, I don’t know how long Twitter takes to approve apps.
      All my apps were created before the app approval process started. Have you



  9. Heto Chakma on January 24, 2019 at 4:46 pm

    Excellent post! This article is very informative and useful also help me a lot. Thanks for sharing.



  10. Ceci on December 22, 2018 at 12:17 am

    Hi Ian, Thanks so much for such an informative article! But what if I applied to get a Twitter developer account and they denied/rejected my application! What are my options now?



    • Ian Anderson Gray on February 21, 2019 at 6:19 am

      Sorry for not getting back to you. Twitter should have told you why they rejected your application so you can make changes. Did they not do this? Unfortunately, Twitter are making things more and more difficult developers.



  11. jamil on November 29, 2018 at 12:01 pm

    thank you for this information
    how can i change This name please



    • Ian Anderson Gray on February 21, 2019 at 6:20 am

      You should just be able to edit the app details. Click on “edit” by the app you want to rename in the list of apps.



  12. J R on November 21, 2018 at 12:54 pm

    Thank you for your tutorial.

    Can you please help me to understand why my app is not authenticated?

    ‘code 32: could not authenticate you’

    Steps done:
    1. Created an app on developer.twtitter.com and received the four different security keys.
    2. The app has read and write access permissions configured there.
    3. For the URL, I used http://www.test.com, since I don’t have any domain and this is for hobby purposes to write my first Twitter bot.
    4. The code was written in node.js and I just can’t seem to get authenticated.

    Can you please help to debug this as after reading and testing different things (also regenerated the keys) I just can’t get beyond this step?

    ############################
    Code:

    //app.js
    
    var Twitter = require('twitter');
    
    
    var T = new Twitter({
    	consumer_key: 'qxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx', 
    	consumer_secret: 'Zxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx', 
    	access_token_key: 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx', 
    	access_token_seret: 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
    })
    
    console.log('Start');
    
    T.get('account/verify_credentials', {
    	include_entities: false,
    	skip_status: true,
    	include_email: false
    }, onAuthenticated)
    
    function onAuthenticated(err, res) {
    	if (err) {
    		console.log(err);
    		throw err
    	}
    
    	console.log('Authentication successfull.  Running bot...\r\n')
    }
    
    console.log('End');
    
    #########################
    
    $ node app.js 
    Start
    End
    [ { code: 32, message: 'Could not authenticate you.' } ]
    
    ../twitter-bots/app.js:27
    		throw err
    		^
    [object Object]
    


    • Ian Anderson Gray on December 5, 2018 at 11:32 am

      Hi JR. I’m really not sure I can help you. I’m not familiar with node.js (except for a few dabbles) but really the only thing I can recommend is to double check the auth keys and make sure that they are correct. Sorry! Ian



    • Ali Hassan on January 23, 2019 at 7:23 am

      Nice post it will be so helpful that how to create twitter app easy steps ,and also informative



  13. Anilkumar Amrutham on November 19, 2018 at 4:47 pm

    Hi,
    For our SAAS based application we need more than 10 apps in account. with 1 developer account I can able to create only 10 apps. Is there any way to create more than 10 apps. I mailed to twitter support. Still i didn’t get any information from them. If you have any idea please let me know. It will be really helpful for us.

    Thanks,
    Anilkumar A



  14. Alex on August 30, 2018 at 10:49 am

    Hi, Ian! Can you help me?
    I created twitter app more than three weeks ago. Now I see only “Application under review” on https://developer.twitter.com/en/apps. Maybe I did something wrong?

    Also,
    step #1
    link dev.twitter.com redirect to https://developer.twitter.com/
    step #3
    On https://apps.twitter.com/ I didn’t find “Manage Your Apps”
    step #4 and so on
    they prevent creating app from “Application management”

    Thank you



    • Ian Anderson Gray on August 30, 2018 at 4:00 pm

      Hi Alex, unfortunately, Twitter has changed things, and you need to sign up for a developer account. All apps then need to be submitted for review. It sounds like you created the app just at the time they changed this. I’ve not had a chance to look at the new system, but if you’ve signed up for a developer account, you should be able to see more information and submit it



  15. Q_Chung on August 30, 2018 at 12:04 am

    Thanks Ian! This is helpful as I am trying to create a developer account. It looks like they have changed the process (perhaps in Beta at the moment?). Is there a way to text chat with someone at Twitter? My problem is kind of weird, and can’t move forward due to this snag. It says I need to associate a phone number with the account. To verify it, I’m supposed to receive a code by text message, but it never comes through. Have you seen something like this?



    • Ian Anderson Gray on August 30, 2018 at 3:58 pm

      Hi, yes, unfortunately, Twitter have changed things and now you need to sign up for a developer account and they need to then accept you. I’m going to have to update this article. As for your problem, I’ve never had this for Twitter, but I have had it elsewhere. Can you try a different number or can you try again? Unfortunately contacting Twitter is nearly impossible to do. Sorry I can’t be any more helpful!



      • Q_Chung on August 31, 2018 at 9:14 pm

        Thank you! Please know that you are helping so many of us (naive users) to move up to the next level, and we appreciate your dedication to enlightening us.



        • Ian Anderson Gray on September 10, 2018 at 10:38 am

          My pleasure. Glad I could help you! Ian



  16. VrqM on August 14, 2018 at 12:13 pm

    Hi, Ian! Did you see this: [Twitter] New developer requirements to protect our platform (https://blog.twitter.com/developer/en_us/topics/tools/2018/new-developer-requirements-to-protect-our-platform.html)? Will you write new tutorial for creating twitter apps?



    • Ian Anderson Gray on August 21, 2018 at 5:34 pm

      Thanks for letting me know about this. I hadn’t seen the news. I understand why Twitter is doing this, but I am quite sad about the news. Twitter has been closing their API more and more over the years and making it more and more difficult for developers. This is the final nail in the coffin. Having said that, it still will be possible to create apps – it’s just that we’ll have to jump through more hoops. I’ll look at updating this tutorial once I’ve tested the new system. Ian



  17. Bipin singh on August 11, 2018 at 8:39 pm

    Sir, i am not able to create application in twitter .would u plz help mee.



    • Ian Anderson Gray on August 21, 2018 at 5:31 pm

      Hi. Sorry, I can’t help with individual situations. But if you can be more specific with what your issues is, I’ll do my best to help.



  18. vinod on July 24, 2018 at 4:58 am

    Thank you very much for this easy steps and I have created them successfully. I’ve implemented the consumer key/secret key, OAuth access token/secret into my java project. the project was running and getting authentication from twitter but it was not returning to my local app., I think I have mistaken in callback URL. Can you pls tell me how to give call back URL to my localhost.



    • Ian Anderson Gray on July 24, 2018 at 8:32 am

      Hi vinod. I’m not sure I can help you here. In my experience, the callback URL hasn’t been important, so I’ve just added my website. Could you try that? I don’t think you can just add localhost to the URL. Ian