Tweetbot 4
Twitter made fitter
$4.99 From Tapbots, tapbots.com/tweetbot Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 10.3 or later
With over 330 million users, Twitter tends to move fast — too fast, potentially, for the syrupy official app. That’s where Tweetbot comes in. It’s quick to update, quick to scroll through your feed, and eschews those little extras (or annoyances) that Twitter sees fit to provide as part of the mainline app. There’s no ‘you might have missed’ — you’re thrown straight into the action. Jumping into threaded conversations is as simple as a swipe, and there are stacks of shortcuts for common interactions, accessed with swipes or by long-pressing the buttons on the bottom menu.
Tweetbot offers several interface niceties, too: swipe two fingers down (or set it to trigger at a certain time) and you can activate a comfortable night mode; flip a larger-screened device on its side, and (as of version 4) you’ll get a column view with your replies, custom lists, or searches. This fourth iteration also adds a brilliant activity view, which combines all of your notifications into a glanceable list, and a real-time statistics view which shows you how much traction your tweets and account are getting.
This is far from an essential app when there’s such a solid free, official option on offer. But Tweetbot is less bloated, and for those little tweaks and extras, for a clean, clear, customizable interface, and for the convenience of Tapbot’s flawless multi-device synchronization, the small investment could well be worth it.
the bottom line. Responsive, beautifully designed, and just a little unnecessary.