Since I’ve been in the iOS universe, I have searched for a Twitter app that I liked, found easy to use, and did what I wanted it to do. Over the last couple years I had found this in Tweetbot 3.
Tweetbot 3 allowed me to use Twitter with a dark theme that actually saves my battery and eyes. Tweetbot 3 allowed multiple accounts and did push notifications for @replies, but not for favorites, follows, and retweets. But Recently Tweetbot 4 came out and I am wondering if it’s worth the upgrade. To see if it lives up to the predecessor’s spot on my phone as the Twitter app for myself and ministry.
At first look there seems to be very little updated to the graphical interface of Tweetbot 4 over Tweetbot 3. I’m down with that. The ability to change fonts between two different fonts and the size set to either system or custom sizes is a great feature available that many twitter apps don’t give you such trivial changes and assume you’ll use it they way they set it up.
The ability to switch between dark and light theme isn’t unique to just Tweetbot. There are others apps that let you select between light and dark themes. What I enjoy about Tweetbot is the automatic change between light and dark as well as just a two finger swipe up or down to change between them. This is something I’ve enjoyed. Though a trivial feature it’s really unique to this app that helps with ability to read in most if not all light settings.
The ability to quickly add accounts is simple and easy to do and if you already have them added in your iOS settings it will automatically import those accounts into the application. And with the ability to switch in composition between accounts with a swipe up and down on the photo in top left corner really makes it easy to ensure your are posting to the wrong account. But the timeline is for each specific account along with replies, favorites, and retweets. Though this is a quick jump between but I felt it would be better controlled in the same screens.
One of the bigger changes I found and liked is the new Twitter account screen. There’s not a big difference, but there are a few more features that have moved or been placed in better locations. The first to be seen is the gear directly to the left of the avatar on the account. This allows you to edit your account right there. If it’s someone else’s account, directly to right, there is a follow/unfollow button. This is a much needed improvement from having to scroll to the bottom for editing and tapping a few other places before you could follow them.
Another large improvement for activities screen. This was one feature that was missing from Tweetbot 3. We had a screen that we could see our replies and a separate from seeing direct messages. We however could not see the @replies, favorites, retweets of our account. But they also took it a step forward. We now can see how many of each of these happen and a graph of this in our stats screen. As you can tell I’m a pretty popular guy (not really):
Where I feel it shines is under the hood that has not really changed from Tweetbot 3 to Tweetbot 4. We have various settings to choose what happens when using images, videos, read later, URL shorting and sync. This is worth the money spent on the app alone. There are some features that are limited but having choices to change always makes me smile in this instance.
Being able to to chose browser is a big feature to. It will open in Safari, in Chrome or open in Tweetbot itself in one of those apps. That’s a nice feature. Also allowing to change settings for quoting is nice to either quote like Twitter, the old school RT or even just putting quotes around it. The ability to choose what happens when swiping right is awesome as well. I’m lazy and feel that the short and long swipe save me. It also allows me to one hand many features I use constantly from favorite-ing to replying and quoting.
In the notifications there’s not just on and off. There’s many features I’ve come to love. The ability to have notifications only come up from people you follow and all is a big deal for some people who are popular. They can choose to only get notified when people they want or by anyone. This seems trivial at first, but if you have an active community on Twitter you can choose when you check Twitter replies from strangers and when you want to get notified by those you follow. Add in the options of getting notified if there’s a retweet and if there’s a quote, etc, this is great too as if you get retweeted a lot and don’t care you can turn each one of these off.
In all the changes are minimal and have changed very little until you realize the same great app purchased is also available on the iPad universally. This has been one of the biggest grips of Tweetbot 3 is that it wasn’t made for Tweetbot 3 to do. Though this isn’t a big deal to everyone I had yet to find an iPad app that i wanted to use. Though it doesn’t always sync between phone and iPad it’s so much nicer than not having same app on both devices.
Pros
- Ability to switch light and dark themes and automatic change
- New stats and activities pages much needed addition
- Account switching is quick and easy
- Selective notifications allows user to not be notified for everything
- The new account pages is much easier to follow and unfollow people
- The addition of iPad support was much welcome feature
Cons
- The choice between fonts is minimal and may make it hard to read for some
- It’s difficult to look up your own twitter account page
- Replies from different accounts and timelines for different accounts are in separate screens
In all I am happy with the new app. It’s still what I wanted from Tweetbot 3. It’s addition of stats and support for iOS is greatly welcome. Over all I would give this app a buy if you don’t have it, but I don’t see enough changes from Tweetbot 3 to Tweetbot 4 to say it’s the must have app. The iPad support is one of the only features that’s worth the price.
Caroline Black says
This is really interesting, I have been wondering about this. Thanks.
Auggie says
Thanks for the comment. It’s a great app the more I use it