For years, Twitter users who rely on the platform’s direct messaging tools have asked for Twitter to improve its DM search features, specifically by providing the capacity to search messages by message content, not just by username.

And now, it seems that Twitter may be ready to act. Back in January, Twitter noted that it was looking at how it could improve DMs, and now, Debugger reports that Twitter’s planning to launch an updated DM experience in May.

Updated message search capacity seems to be the key focus. As noted, right now, you can search in your DMs, but only by username.

Twitter has also experimented with more advanced search features in the past, like searching in a specific DM thread for shared media and links.

Those options have not been widely rolled out, and could be part of this coming search update. But the capacity to search by message content would be the most significant advance. There are, of course, privacy considerations that need to be accounted for within such process, but keyword search for DM text would be a helpful addition, that could make Twitter DMs a more useful tool.

That could also be a good addition for your Twitter customer service efforts. Providing more search tools could help to streamline your DM response – for example, you could search for all users who’ve asked a question about a product, and provide relevant updates as they come to hand.

We don’t have any specific information from Twitter on what will be updated as yet, but we could see changes to DMs coming very soon. We’ll keep you updated on any progress.