Twitter Spaces could come to third-party apps thanks to new API changes

Twitter Spaces Art (Image credit: Twitter)

What you need to know

Twitter has changed its third-party API to include support for Spaces.
The change could open the door for third-party Twitter alls to support Spaces.

Twitter has made changes to its API that could allow third-party apps like Tweetbot and Twitteriffic to add support for Spaces in the future.

As reported by TechCrunch, the changes were confirmed in a developer blog post.

As part of today's launch, all developers using the new Twitter API v2 will be able to look up live or scheduled Spaces using criteria like Spaces ID, user ID, or keyword. With the Spaces lookup and Spaces search endpoints, we hope to enable developers to build tools and solutions that help people on (and off) Twitter find interesting and relevant Spaces more easily. This will also benefit Spaces Hosts by making their conversations more discoverable and bringing more engaged listeners into their Spaces. And, with Spaces lookup, you can also begin to understand the public metadata and metrics associated with an active Space.

Developers will need to be using the v2 release of Twitter's API, something that most are doing at this point.

iMore's Twitter in Tweetbot on iPhone 11 Pro (Image credit: Christine Romero-Chan / iMore)

While this new API update seems squarely based on giving third-party apps the ability to surface Spaces, more tools could be coming in the future. Don't expect an app to be built solely to act as a Spaces client however — Twitter says that isn't something it plans and that developers haven't expressed an interest in building such an app.

For now, Twitter's own app is the only one that has any knowledge of Spaces, but it's far from the best iPhone app for reading tweets — the main reason many people head to the social network.

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.