Twitter does not give you much room for customization.  Luckily other tools exist that will allow you to tailor your Twitter interface to suit you.

One of the most powerful of those tool is your trusty Ad Blocker.

Not only can it remove distracting or unwanted ads, you can also use it to remove any webpage element you might not want and you can do it in just a few clicks.

Now this will not work for app versions of Twitter. This works best on the desktop, although it might work if you are running an ad blocker and using a mobile site on your phone or tablet.

I like the free and open source ad blocker uBlock Origin. 

  1. Once you have it installed, open Twitter in your browser.
  2. Find an element you want to remove.  I would start with Moments in the top naviation.
  3. Right click on the word elements.
  4. You should see an option to “Block Element.”
  5. Select Block Element.
  6. This will bring up a new window in the lower right hand corner of your screen.  If you click “Create” on that window, a new rule will be created in your Ad Blocker that will always look for that element on Twitter and attempt to block it from loading.  
  7. Now just repeat this until you have block any and all elements you might not want to load.

You might notice that you can not click “Create” and that you will go into a selection mode with UBlock Origin.  You will something that resembles a crosshairs and when you mouse over parts of the page, it will highlight them. 

This way of block is actually easier in the long run.  It allows you select much larger elements.  But be cautious in your approach.  Undoing these blocks is not difficult, but it is easily avoided if you take your time.

Elements might reappear in the future.  That is most likely from code changes by Twitter.  If that does happen, you can just block the element again.  It does not take long and changes like this are not that common.

Unwanted elements on any tool you use can be a distraction.  It is just more noise, that can prevent you from utilizing Twitter as YOU want to use it.  So spend a little time cleaning up your interface and then maybe take a look at some of the the other sites you use. Very quickly you will realize just by taking control, how much better your online experience can be.