how are people finding an old tweet in 2026?

advanced search on X does it. type something like from:theirhandle since:2021-01-01 until:2021-03-31 plus a word you remember from the tweet. narrow the dates until it shows up. if it's your own account, settings > your account > download an archive is more reliable, you get every tweet as a file and can ctrl+f it. for a deleted tweet, the wayback machine sometimes has the profile page from around that date, that's the last resort.