Twitter says it wants a more consistent experience for its users, which seems like exactly the wrong reason to announce its Mac client app isn’t supported any more, but that’s exactly what happened. That means who wants a native Mac app for the social network service needs to start looking for a replacement now. We went on the hunt for a modern alternative, and it turns out there are only two choices.
There are loads of Twitter client apps for the Mac, but that doesn’t mean there are lots of choices. We had three three criteria each app had to meet to be considered: 280 character limit support, modern retweet support, and reliable performance on macOS Sierra and High Sierra. Twitter poll support wasn’t on the list because that’s a feature Twitter is holding back for itself.
That quickly narrowed the choices down to two: Tweetbot and Twitterrific 5.
Tweetbot
If you’re looking for an client that more closely matches Twitter’s interface from its now deprecated app, Tweetbot is probably the right choice for you. You can log in to multiple accounts, easily see which accounts have activity since your last check, view conversations and direct messages in separate columns, sync timelines with the iOS companion app, filter posts based on words and hashtags, and save searches. Tweetbot costs US$9.99 on the Mac App Store.
Twitterrific 5
After a multi-year absence on the Mac, Twitterrific is back with version 5. It supports multiple accounts and multiple windows, uses color coding to make it easy to see replies, breaks out chat threads, syncs timelines with the iOS version, shows embedded graphics and movies in pop-out windows, and lets you filter out posts based on words and hashtags. Twitterrific is regularly priced at $19.99, but is currently reduced to $7.99 on the Mac App Store.
Why not Twitter in Your Browser?
There’s no reason why you can’t use Twitter in your favorite web browser. You get full support for all of Twitter’s features, including polls. Some people just aren’t into using their web browser for everything they do.
Others, like me, need to view multiple accounts at the same time. That’s something you can’t do on the Twitter website. The workaround is to use a different browser app for each account, or use Ghost Browser—a browser that lets you sandbox tabs into their own browser instance. That’s a fancy way of saying you can log in to multiple Twitter accounts just by opening the site into different tabs.
I know this is not a fair question, but which one do you use or are planning on using?