A guide for self-hosting a Nitter instance

Why

Nitter is a fantastic alternative frontend for Twitter. Instead of using Twitter's official web interface or app, which contains ads or algorithmic contents that you may not like, Nitter enables you to browse Twitter content without those potential distractions. Nitter also exposes Twitter contents as RSS feeds so that you can 1) view them in an RSS reader 2) manipulate them programatically, such as crossposting to Mastodon, filtering and archiving.

If this sounds interesting to you, read on.

There were once public Nitter instances that you can just use. However, with some recent changes happening on Twitter's side, it's becoming increasingly hard for people to host public Nitter instances.

However, regardless of the demise of public Nitter instances, it is still possible to use Nitter as long as you host your own instance and use it on a personal scale only, and this is a guide that helps you do exactly that.

What do you need

• A burner/temporary Twitter account without 2FA enabled (sign up here)
• Some Linux and terminal knowledge

Steps to host on a server or NAS

1. Create a docker-compose.yml file.

Create a docker-compose.yml file by copying this file

Replace zedeus/nitter:latest with zedeus/nitter:latest-arm64 if your server or NAS is ARM64

2. Create a nitter.conf file

Create a nitter.conf file by copying this file

Change redisHost = "localhost" to redisHost = "nitter-redis"

Customize other options of this config file to your liking

3. Obtain credentials

Follow Nitter's guide on obtaining credentials

Place the resulting sessions.jsonl to the directory you were working in from the previous step

4. Run Nitter

docker compose up -d

If everything goes well, you should now be able to

• Access your Nitter instance from http://localhost:8080
• Access a RSS feed for your Nitter instance such as http://localhost:8080/elonmusk/rss