Twitter: one of the first apps to embed Quick Reply within notifications on iOS 9

Twitter 6.0 for iOS app icon small

One of the new features of iOS 9 that Apple hasn’t actively advertised has the tremendous potential to be actively used on an everyday basis by the vast majority of users: it at last permits third-party developers to implement Quick Reply functionality within banner alerts, the Notification Center and notifications shown on the Lock screen.

Twitter is one of the first applications out of the gate to have readily adopted this feature in its most recent update that just hit the App Store. And if you own an iPad with iOS 9, you can now use Twitter in iOS 9’s new side-by-side multitasking mode.

People are reporting on Twitter that Quick Reply is broken in this update and a few members of our team were able to independently confirm this.

“Starting today, users on iOS 9 can use Twitter beside their other apps, like Safari and Mail,” writes the micro-blogging startup. “Additionally, users can reply to tweet mention notifications from anywhere in iOS via push notification quick replies.”

In addition to quick-replying from the notification banner itself, you can also swipe to the left and tap the new Reply option on Twitter’s notification on your Lock screen.

This is a major, major productivity boost.

Before today, apps like Twitter, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Mailbox and many others supported custom actions directly from alerts, but not Quick Replies with text.

For instance, a notification for a third-party email client was allowed to show you a few lines of the new message within the alert itself and provide buttons to mark the message as read, trash it and what not.

And whereas some apps did embed the Reply button inside the notification, tapping it would simply launch the app.

Because Quick Reply was not allowed for third-party apps prior to iOS 9, you just couldn’t pull down on a third-party notification banner, type a message inside a text box and tap Send.

As you know, Quick Reply debuted last fall as part of the iOS 8 software update as an Apple-exclusive feature for the stock Messages app.

Now that iOS 9 allows developers to implement Quick Reply, more and more of your favorite apps will let you reply to message directly, simply by swiping down on the notification banner.

Are you excited for Quick Reply in your favorite apps?

Grab Twitter free in the App Store.