Schedule tweets

Queue text tweets for later delivery. You must configure and authorize Twitter CLI first. The CLI stores the queue locally; it sends due tweets only when twitter schedule run executes.

Add a tweet to the queue

Provide a body and a time expression:

twitter schedule new --body "Ship update" --at "17:06"
twitter schedule new --body "Tuesday update" --on "Tuesday"
twitter schedule new --body "Soon" --in "30 minutes"

--at and --in are aliases for --on, so use one of them per command. The CLI parses the expression using the local time zone of the user running it. If a parsed time falls in the past, version 1.10.0 advances it by one day. Always list the queue after adding a tweet to confirm the resolved send time.

Scheduling saves the text locally; it does not publish the tweet immediately. The queue is stored on this computer, so another installation does not see it. The scheduler does not accept --image. To queue the contents of a file, see Unix examples.

Inspect the queue

Run:

twitter schedule list

The table shows an ID, status, body, send time, attempt count, and applicable error and sent timestamps. Long bodies are shortened in the display, but the full text remains stored. The summary counts pending, failed, and sent rows.

Use a filter to inspect completed or failed work:

twitter schedule list --filter failed
twitter schedule list --filter sent

The accepted filters are all, failed, and sent; all is the default. If a filter matches no rows, the CLI says No scheduled tweets were found.

Run due tweets

Sends due tweets

twitter schedule run publishes every pending tweet whose scheduled time has passed. Check the queue with twitter schedule list before running it manually.

Run:

twitter schedule run

The command sends pending rows whose scheduled time has passed. It marks each successful row sent and stores a sent time. It marks a failed row failed, increments its attempt count, and stores the error. It prints sent and failed totals when it finishes. Failed rows are not picked up by the next schedule run; there is no retry or single-row edit command in version 1.10.0. Recreate a failed tweet with schedule new after fixing the cause.

If nothing is due, the CLI prints No pending scheduled tweets to run.

Run automatically

Choose the setup for your operating system. The scheduler must run under the same operating system user who configured and authorized the CLI, so it can read the configuration and local queue. On macOS or Linux, run command -v twitter and use its output as the binary path below.

Linux and macOS

Add the configuration for your operating system:

Linux · crontab entry

* * * * * /usr/local/bin/twitter schedule run >> /tmp/twitter-schedule.log 2>&1

macOS · LaunchAgent plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key><string>com.twitter.schedule</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      <string>/usr/local/bin/twitter</string>
      <string>schedule</string>
      <string>run</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartInterval</key><integer>60</integer>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key><string>/tmp/twitter-schedule.log</string>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key><string>/tmp/twitter-schedule.log</string>
  </dict>
</plist>

Replace /usr/local/bin/twitter with the result of command -v twitter in either tab.

On Linux, open your crontab with crontab -e, add the line from the Linux tab, and inspect /tmp/twitter-schedule.log if a run fails.

On macOS, save the plist from the macOS tab as ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.twitter.schedule.plist, then load and start it:

launchctl bootstrap gui/$(id -u) ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.twitter.schedule.plist
launchctl kickstart -k gui/$(id -u)/com.twitter.schedule

Review /tmp/twitter-schedule.log and twitter schedule list to verify delivery.

Windows

If you use a Windows build, find twitter.exe with where.exe twitter in PowerShell. In Task Scheduler, create a task that repeats every minute under the Windows account that configured and authorized the CLI. Set Program/script to the full path to twitter.exe and Add arguments to schedule run. Run the task once and inspect twitter schedule list.

Clear the queue

Removes every scheduled row

twitter schedule clear deletes pending, sent, and failed rows without a confirmation prompt. Check twitter schedule list first.

Run twitter schedule clear to remove the queue. The CLI reports how many records it removed.