Twitterrific, one of the oldest and original third-party Twitter clients on macOS and iOS, just hit version 6.0 on iPhone and iPad. Twitterrific 6 brings about a ton of amazing new features, improvements, and necessary bug fixes.
What's new with Twitterrific 6
This is a huge update, and it adds many cool new features that any Twitter user will appreciate.
GIPHY Integration has finally arrived! Yes, we all love to react with GIFs when it comes to expressing our reactions online, and now Twitterrific has built-in GIPHY support. Just select the GIF button when composing a tweet or reply, and then you can search for the GIF you want, or choose from popular ones under Reactions, Memes, or my personal favorite, Swear Trek.
If you're a fan of autoplaying videos and GIFs, this is now available in Twitterrific. And to top it off, they all play automatically on silent, so you don't have any rude surprises. If you're not a fan of autoplaying anything, then you can simply turn it off in the settings.
Twitterrific 6 now supports full images right in the timeline view. The image attachment thumbnail displays at the photo's native aspect ratio, and if there are two or more images, it uses adjusted aspect ratios and face-detection to avoid taking up unnecessary space.
There is support for Twitter's new quoted tweets with media. This means you can add media attachments (photo, video, animated GIF) while quoting another tweet. In the timeline, it displays both the quoted tweet as well as the media you attached to it.
The new attachment preview makes it easy to view media as well as the descriptions that go along with it in a single view. You can even swipe through multiple photos while still seeing the description.
And for those who love customizing things, Twitterrific 6 brings even more customization options to the table. There are three brand new icons, five new color themes, a new font, high contrast text option, smaller line spacing, and a new Presentation setting that lets you choose to display a tweet author's full name, username, or both. As a bonus, there are also 12 new "Olliemoji" stickers in the bundled Messages sticker pack.
How about those improvements and bug fixes?
There are a lot of individual improvements and bug fixes, so let's round up some of the more important ones.
Nice improvements
Twitterrific will now ignore the mute switch when playing audio in the app, which the developers have said is a feature that most people wanted. Videos without audio no longer duck background audio playing in other apps (huzzah!). The maximum number of tweets that can be in the timeline has been increased, so you can see more tweets at a given time.
Popup views on the iPad make better use of your available screen space. Selecting a tweet will no longer scroll the timeline, and clearing out the search filter will no longer lose your place in the timeline. You can also long-press the "Follow" button on a profile to follow that user with a different account than the one you're on.
There are also quite a few changes with VoiceOver. You can now check what type of media and how many photos are attached to a tweet. All headings, tab bar buttons, and toggles are marked as such for VoiceOver. The VoiceOver magic tap on the main timeline will open up the compose window. And the VoiceOver escape gesture has been added to all popups.
Here's a list of the remaining improvements that are added in Twitterrific 6:
- Refreshed glyphs, font weights and colors app-wide
- New "Audio & Video" settings category for autoplay and sound effects
- Added support for the Brave web browser
- Added animation with compose sub-panels open/close
- Changed the default app icon - the previous icon is an option in the theme panel
- Long-pressing a user in compose's user search no longer dismisses the view
- Clear buttons on search fields only appear when needed
- Replies to a tweet are sorted by date instead of by engagement
- All panels and popups have rounded corners
- Private lists have a new icon in the sidebar
- The Twitterrific banner ad uses your current app icon
- Improved tap area of the location badge on tweets with an attached location
Squashed bugs
If you've been experiencing bugs and glitches in Twitterrific 5, here's a full list of the bug fixes that made it in this huge update.
- Timelines never refresh if the "Automatically Refresh Timelines" setting is off
- Fixed an issue where some quoted tweets wouldn't show their quoted URLs
- Fixed some Twitter URLs from being incorrectly identified as a link to a user
- Fixed Center Stage & DM layout issues on devices without home buttons
- Fixed problems preventing the "Open User Page" profile action from working
- Fixed a bug that would break user and hashtag autocomplete when swapping accounts while composing a tweet
- The "Profile Photo" avatar shortcut (long press) now opens the image in app
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused the banner ad to be blank
- Loading reply chains no longer leaves a zombie timeline open in memory
- Fixed animation issues while dismissing compose's autosuggestion bar
- Profile action popups appear in the correct location on iPad
- Accessibility descriptions are properly attached to videos or GIFs when posting
- Fixed compose view layout problems after rotating & dismissing the keyboard
- Fixed a bug that could cause crashes at launch and when switching accounts
- Timelines won't loop forever trying to fill a gap that could never be filled
- Timelines no longer unceremoniously stop scrolling when decelerating
- Timelines can update in the background while being filtered by a search query
- Fixed timeline position issues when clearing the cache or adding a new account
- Fixed display issues with the alt app icons while scrolling the Appearance Panel
- Fixed a problem causing the timeline loading indicator to flicker
- Fixed several issues that caused crashes when clearing the cache
- The keyboard no longer appears while viewing drafts
- Trends are now correctly sorted by popularity
- Removed old and obsolete code
Pricing changes
With this update come a few pricing changes.
First off, Twitterrific 6 is now free to download, and there are no feature restrictions. However, there is now a banner ad at the top of your timeline, with periodic reminders to subscribe.
Yes, that's right. You can subscribe monthly for $1 or $10 annually to remove ads. Or you can do a one-time payment of $30 to get rid of both subscription reminders and ads for the lifetime of Twitterrific 6.
Twitterrific 6 also requires at least iOS 11.2 and later.
A beautiful and refined Twitter experience
When it comes to Twitter apps on my iPhone and iPad, I often juggle between Tweetbot and Twitterrific (I find both better than the official Twitter app). I mostly stick with the former because of all of the power-user features and all of my muted hashtags and accounts, but Twitterrific is just downright gorgeous.
When I want a change of pace from my normal Twitter viewing, I'll go to Twitterrific. The interface is too pretty, and there are a ton of amazing new customization options that make it hard to go back. The new GIPHY integration is incredible, and the new attachment preview is nice, as I often like to have the description shown with a full-size image when showing my husband something I find hilarious. The improvements also refine the overall experience, and since it's now free, there's no reason to not give it a try, at the very least.
The road to Twitterrific 6 has not been an easy one. If you're curious about their development history timeline, give it a look here.
