What you need to know
- Nighthawk is available in the App Store now.
- The iPhone and iPad app is a new take on the Twitter app.
- It makes it easier to personalize your Twitter experience.
Nighthawk is a new Twitter app for iPhone and iPad that hopes to make it easier than ever to see the tweets you want without seeing the ones you don't. It's available in the App Store now and costs $3.99 (opens in new tab).
While most Twitter apps have options to mute words and phrases, NIghthawk goes a step further by offering Smart Filters that can be enabled when needed. Those filters might hide all tweets related to politics. Or maybe it's the latest movie that you're trying to avoid spoilers for. Nighthawk promises to keep those tweets out of your timline.
By default, Nighthawk displays tweets in the timeline chronologically, the way nature intended. You're bound to come across some tweets that might rub you the wrong way, which is why Nighthawk provides tons of human-curated filters to mute out what you don't want.Looking to take a break from election chatter? Add the U.S. Politics filter. Planning to see The Rise of Skywalker? Add the Star Wars filter and hide tweets with potential spoilers.
Alongisde filters, Nighthawk also has a Close Friends mode that will surface the tweets that you're most likely to want to see, hiding all of the other stuff that would normally appear in your full timeline. Think of it as a Twitter list, but with a more enjoyable interface.
Your closest friends probably mean more to you than Brand X does, so it would make sense to give your friends' tweets priority over everyone else's. Enter the Close Friends timeline.When Nighthawk is first launched, you're given the option to select who your close friends are. When you view your Close Friends timeline, all other accounts will be hidden, allowing your friends and their dumb opinions to rise to the top.
The Nighthawk developers say that they don't expect the app to replace current favorites like Tweetbot or Twitteriffic, bur rather compliment them instead. The app doesn't have any ads and it won't collect data as you go, either. That's only really made possible by charing for the app – something too many developers feel they're unable to do.
It's still early days for NIghthawk, but the premise is an interesting one. You'll probably need to be a big Twitter use to get the most out of it. But really, who isn't these days?
Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.
Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.
