Show DEV: read public X profiles, threads and media without an account

Evan Mercer — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 15:00:43 +0000

Someone drops an X link in a group chat. You tap it, and instead of the post you get a login
screen. The post is public. You just can't read it.

That happened to me often enough that I built a way around the reading part, and then put it
online for anyone else who wanted it: twitterviewer.net. I'm the
person who makes and maintains it, so treat this as a maker's introduction rather than a review.

Why it exists

I read a lot of links I never chose. Research notes, group chats, search results, a citation in
an article — someone else decided the link was worth sharing, and I just want to see what's on
the other end. Making an account to read a single post always felt like a bad trade, and I
didn't want to be logged in while I was just skimming.

So I made myself a reader. It stayed a personal thing for a while, then it seemed silly not to
share it. It's still a side project: evenings, weekends, one person. That shapes what it does —
everything in it started as something I wanted for myself.

What it does

Reading

Look at an account. Someone recommends an account and you want to see what it actually
posts before deciding whether it's worth following anywhere. The
profile viewer shows the profile, the bio
and recent posts.

Read a post with its replies. Half the time the replies are the point — a claim gets
corrected, or the context arrives three replies down. Paste the post URL and you get the post
together with its reply thread.

There's a shortcut for both: take any x.com or twitter.com URL and swap the host for
twitterviewer.net. The rest of the path stays the same, so
x.com/someone/status/123 becomes twitterviewer.net/someone/status/123.

Just the images and video. If you're looking at an illustrator or a photographer, the text
is noise. The media viewer gives you a photo and video wall for an account and nothing else.

Find an account. You remember the name but not the handle, or there are four accounts with
almost the same handle and you need the right one. Search by name or handle.

Saving media

Video. Paste a post URL, wait for the preview, and
download the MP4. When X serves more than
one resolution, you pick which one you want.

GIFs. This one surprises people. X doesn't store GIFs as GIFs — an uploaded GIF becomes a
looping, silent MP4 — so a plain download hands you an .mp4 no matter what the post looked
like. The GIF downloader converts it back
to an actual .gif file, or you can keep the MP4 if that's what you were after.

Two odd ones

Account location. Some accounts expose location information in their "about this account"
details. The location checker pulls that up for a public account. It's a small thing, but if
you're trying to work out whether an account is who it says it is, it's one more data point.

Community member lists. The
communities exporter takes an X Community
URL or ID and gives you the member list as CSV or Excel — handle, display name, verified flag,
role (admin / moderator / member) and profile URL. It caps at 1,000 members and a full export
takes around five minutes.

There's also an entry point for AI agents, so an agent can read this content without an X
account of its own. I'll write that up separately; it's not something you need to care about
if you're just here to read a post.

What it doesn't do

Public content only. Protected accounts aren't visible, and that's deliberate — a locked account is locked.
Read-only. You can't post, reply, like or follow. It's a reader, not a client.
No connection to X. It isn't an official product, there's no partnership and no endorsement. It's a hobby project by someone who is not X.
It doesn't always work. Sometimes a page just won't load its content. When that happens you get told so rather than a blank page, but "read this later" is the honest answer some of the time.
Downloaded media isn't yours. The copyright stays with whoever made it. Saving something for reference and reposting it as your own are different things.

Free, and it doesn't want your account

No signup, no login, no payment. There's also no account system on my side, which means there's
nothing for you to hand over — I'm not asking for X credentials and there's nowhere to put them.

If you try it

If a page won't load, or there's something you keep wanting it to do and it doesn't, tell me in
the comments. One person maintains this, so the list of what gets fixed next is mostly whatever
people actually complain about.

DEV Community: Evan Mercer