Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter appears to be working on a feature called โ€œSearch Subscribe,โ€ which will let users opt to receive notifications for new tweets matching a search query. The feature was first spotted by developer Dylan Roussel, and appears to put Twitterโ€™s bell notification icon next to the search box in its app. Tap the bell, and youโ€™ll get notifications for new results.

Search Subscribe is only showing up in the Twitter Alpha app for now, so you shouldnโ€™t take this as a sign that itโ€™s imminent or even definitely coming. But itโ€™s an interesting idea, and yet another attempt from Twitter to make it easier for users to find the stuff theyโ€™re actually looking for. Right now you can get notifications for individual users, or selectively mute or block things by keyword, but you canโ€™t opt into specific tweets rather than specific tweeters. As 9to5Google points out, the closest analog to this is probably TweetDeck, which lets you create a column for a search result and get notifications every time it updates. And given TweetDeckโ€™s looming demise as a native app, itโ€™s good to see any of its features migrating to the lone remaining Twitter clients.

Twitter is working on a feature allowing you to subscribe to search results. Once subscribed, you’ll receive push notifications for Tweets about your search query! pic.twitter.com/plTlt484oN

โ€” Dylan Roussel (@evowizz) May 31, 2022

In one sense, signing up for what amounts to Twitterโ€™s version of Google Alerts sounds like a hellscape nightmare of push notifications. Hit that bell on โ€œDepp Heardโ€ or โ€œNBA Finals,โ€ and watch your phone explode with useless notifications. But Twitterโ€™s search allows for a lot of advanced filtering, such that you could use it to get notifications from a single person, but only their best tweets or the ones you care about most. Or, with some effort, you could search for just the tweets that mention the NBA or the Celtics or the Warriors or basketball in general, from your six favorite basketball writers, and only the ones that get more than 50 likes.

You can already create and save complex searches like these, but youโ€™ll always have to go run the search every time you want to see whatโ€™s new. Search Subscribe could โ€“ and I emphasize could, because it could also be a huge mess โ€” be a useful way to get exactly the notifications youโ€™re looking for. Or, you could just do what everyone does with Google Alerts, and set one up for your name. In that case, given Twitterโ€™s propensity for chaos and rage, the fewer notifications the better.

Again, thereโ€™s no indication whether or when this feature will launch. Twitter hasnโ€™t yet responded to a request for comment, and given the ongoing shakeup in the companyโ€™s product team, all bets seem to be off with the companyโ€™s roadmap. But if it does, hereโ€™s some advice: choose your search very carefully before you hit that bell.

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