Twitter

At last, the official Twitter app gains support for the native Share Sheet in iOS 8

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated May 7, 2018

As most of you guys know by now, I've been a pretty big proponent of the official Twitter app for quite some time. As a former Tweetbot user, I find the official Twitter app to be more engaging.

But there are still a couple of lingering issues with the official Twitter app that I despise. One of them is the lack of a quick way to access my Twitter lists. The other, is an issue that Twitter just remedied today.

As of today, and as first spotted by MacStories, users can now share content from the stock Twitter app using the native iOS 8 share sheet. While not as seamless as it could be, it's still a large step in the right direction for Twitter on the iPhone.

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Vine updated with new HD upload setting and improved discovery

Cody Lee ∙ Updated October 14, 2018

Twitter updated its 6-second video sharing app Vine today, bringing the iOS client to version 3.4.2. The update brings about two major improvements: suggestions for popular Viners to follow, and a new quality setting that lets you post your Vines in HD.

The former should help Vine with its discovery problem, something its parent company Twitter particularly struggles with. It's nearly impossible to convince new users to stick around when it's difficult to quickly find interesting and entertaining content.

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Twitter++ brings improved sharing, list access, and media handling to the stock Twitter app

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated May 7, 2018

As a former Tweetbot user, there are some things I miss about that app, that I don't get to have on the stock Twitter app. One of the most glaring omissions is the lack of quick list access directly from the main feed.

Twitter++ (free on BigBoss) is a new jailbreak tweak that adds easy list access, along with a whole slew of other desirable features. It lets you easily share links and images from tweets, share tweets outside of twitter, share direct messages, download videos, and much, much more.

If you're looking to supercharge the stock Twitter app experience on iOS, then look no further than Twitter++.

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Tweetbot for Mac brings support for Twitter’s new quoting format and longer direct messages

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 22, 2015

Tweetbot for Mac with support for Yosemite's design and a plethora of other improvements hit earlier in the month as a free upgrade for existing users. Monday, its developer Tapbots issued the first maintenance refresh bringing out support for a pair of Twitter's recently introduced handy new features.

Tweetbot 2.0.1 for Mac now lets you quote tweets using Twitter's new embedded quoting feature. In addition, they've laid the groundwork for longer direct messages, a feature Twitter announced almost two weeks ago but hasn't implemented yet.

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Twitter allegedly entering news curation with Project Lightning

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 18, 2015

News curation has shortly become all the rage in the technology and media industries. Facebook sped up your News Feed with quick-loading Instant Article.

Then a new 'Apple News' app followed, a major initiative by Apple to host news articles and employ human editors to surface best content for its uses.

And now, Twitter is reportedly joining the fray and creating a similar concept of its own. They're calling it Project Lightning and, as reported by BuzzFeed's Mat Honan, it should make important news and events follow you across Twitter platforms, not the other way round.

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Twitter for iOS and twitter.com to start autoplaying videos today—here’s how to turn it off

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 16, 2015

You could say I'm not a big fan of intrusive autoplay videos in apps, not to mention those pesky autoplay video ads on some websites. With that in mind, I was taken aback when Twitter announced today adding this very feature to its iPhone and iPad application and the web interface.

Now when you stumble upon a tweet with an embedded Vine, animated GIF or a clip in Twitter's native format, it will begin to play back automatically.

It's all part of the grand plan to shove advertising down our throat though Twitter would have us believe it's trying to make our lives easier so we could “keep up with the action without missing a tweet and get a better sense of what’s been shared instantly.”

Because autoplay videos suck your cellular data, this feature is a major concern in this age of non-unlimited plans. True, Twitter promises to opt out of autoplay anyone who's on a high-rate data plan, but I'd rather trust my instincts and revert back to the old-school click-to-play experience.

Thankfully, there's an easy way to do just that.

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Twitter to remove 140 character limit in Direct Messages

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Twitter on Thursday announced that it will be removing the 140-character limit in Direct Messages. Starting in July, DMs will have a new limit of 10,000 characters, bringing it in line with other instant messaging services.

The move makes sense, given that the nature of a DM is typically more private and intimate than that of a Tweet, thus requiring more typing space. Twitter says the character limit for public-facing Tweets will remain at 140.

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Twitter expands beta testing program to iOS

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Twitter has expanded its beta testing program to iOS, according to TechCrunch. The social network confirmed to the publication that it recently launched a new "Twitter for iOS Experiments Program," which will allow some users to test experimental features ahead of public release.

The new program works very similar to its Android sibling, which launched in 2013. Select users will receive a pop-up notification at the top of their Twitter feed in the iPhone app that asks if they would like to participate in "Experiments" to help test out bug fixes and new features.

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Vine updated with new search feature for finding and discovering videos

Cody Lee ∙ Updated October 14, 2018

Twitter updated its 6-second video sharing app Vine today, bringing the iOS client to version 3.4. The change log only includes a single item, but it's a significant one for users who have ever had trouble tracking down a clip: proper search.

Since its inception, or close to it, users have been able to search Vine for users and hashtags, but this returned extremely limited results, and made it nearly impossible to discover or track down older, popular videos. But that changes today.

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Tweetbot 2 for Mac arrives with OS X Yosemite design and other new features

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 4, 2015

Better late than never! Developer Tapbots has at last unleashed a major update to its popular Twitter client for OS X. Tweetbot 2 for Mac is now available as a free update for existing Tweetbot users. For new users, the application is now available at a discounted price of $12.99, down from its regular asking price of $19.99.

Aside from a fresh coat of paint and a dark translucent appearance on Yosemite systems, Tweetbot 2 for Mac sports an improved timeline search feature, optional verified badges, a three-pane layout that brings order to your lists, an iOS-style interface in the tweet detail view, the ability to see a user's recent photos and more.

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Unsurprisingly, iPhone Messages bug crashes iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, WhatsApp, Twitter and Snapchat

Christian Zibreg ∙ May 29, 2015

An odd software bug which causes the iPhone's Messages application to crash and sends the handset into a respring after a certain text is received affects the iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, too. In addition, the text bug apparently affects third-party social and messaging apps that deal with text, including WhatsApp, Twitter and Snapchat, The Guardian newspaper learned today.

That's hardly surprising. The issue can be traced back to a specific series of Unicode characters, suggesting a bug in the text engine framework called CoreText that exists in iOS and OS X.

That would explain why third-party apps that deal with messages, like Twitter and Snapchat, were affected as they tap into Apple's CoreText engine to manage strings of text and layouts.

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