Twitter / X has a built-in muted words feature — you can find it under Settings → Privacy and Safety → Muted Words. You can add a term, choose whether to mute it from home, notifications, or both, and set it to expire after a day, week, or forever.
It sounds like exactly what you need. In practice, it's frustrating to use and inconsistent in what it catches. Here's why — and what works better.
The Problem with Twitter's Native Mute
| Feature | Twitter native mute | ElementHider |
|---|---|---|
| Filters home timeline | ✓ | ✓ |
| Filters quoted tweets | ✗ inconsistent | ✓ |
| Filters "For You" algorithmic tab | ✗ partial | ✓ |
| Filters trend sidebar | ✗ no | ✓ |
| Works in real-time as feed loads | ✗ | ✓ |
| Group/toggle rules easily | ✗ | ✓ (Supporter Pack) |
The biggest gap is the algorithmic "For You" feed. Twitter's own mute system doesn't reliably suppress keywords in algorithmically-promoted tweets — those are served differently from your follow graph's tweets and often bypass the mute filter. A browser-level filter has no such distinction; it removes any DOM element that contains the keyword, regardless of how Twitter served it.
Setting Up ElementHider for Twitter / X
ElementHider runs in your browser and filters content before it reaches your eyes. It handles Twitter's infinite scroll correctly — new tweets that load as you scroll down are filtered just as reliably as the initial page load.
Add your keywords
Open the extension popup and type what you want filtered. You can add as many keywords as you like: spoiler Game of Thrones Champions League Promoted
Pin to x.com only (optional)
Toggle "This site only" so the rule only applies on x.com — useful if you have a keyword that means something different on other sites.
Set a hide mode
Hide removes the tweet entirely. Blur makes it unreadable — useful when you want to know something was filtered without reading it. Enable hover-to-reveal in settings if you want to be able to peek at blurred tweets.
Common Use Cases
Blocking spoilers before you've watched something
Add the show or film name before the release date, and remove it once you've watched. If you use the Supporter Pack's Groups feature, create a Spoilers group and add everything to it — then toggle the group off once you're up to date. The same technique works for blocking sports scores and match spoilers during a tournament.
Reducing political noise during election season
Keywords like election vote senator debate applied to x.com can dramatically reduce the noise without unfollowing accounts you otherwise enjoy. Toggle the group off when you're ready to re-engage.
Hiding the Trending sidebar entirely
Use ElementHider's point-and-click hiding mode to click the Trends sidebar and create a CSS-selector rule that hides it on every visit. The entire "What's happening" section disappears — across all tabs, automatically.
Tip: The Trends sidebar often surfaces spoilers even for accounts you don't follow. Hiding it permanently is one of the highest-value things you can do for a calmer Twitter experience.
How It Handles Retweets and Quote Tweets
When someone you follow retweets a post containing your keyword, ElementHider removes the entire retweet container — you won't see it. The same applies to quote tweets: if the quoted tweet or the quoting tweet contains the keyword, the whole card is hidden. This is more complete than Twitter's own mute, which often shows the outer tweet but hides the quoted content (leaving a confusing empty box).
The Bottom Line
Twitter's native mute words is better than nothing, but it's not reliable enough for high-stakes filtering — spoilers, election content, or anything you genuinely don't want to see. Browser-level filtering with ElementHider is more thorough, works in real-time, and gives you explicit control over which sites each rule applies to. You can use both in combination: native mute for notifications, ElementHider for the feed itself. And because it's not a Twitter-specific tool, the same keyword-filtering approach works on any site — including Facebook and Instagram feeds if you want the same calm timeline everywhere.