iPhone Twitter App Showdown: Tweetbot vs. Twitter

 

 

 

There are dozens of Twitter clients for the iPhone, but the official Twitter app and the third-party Tweetbot are two of the most popular. One’s free, the other’s pretty expensive at $9.99. Let’s dig into the main differences between the two, and see if the difference in experience is worth the difference in cost.

 

Because of the way Twitter works, developing a Twitter app is a pain. It’s expensive for developers because Twitter charges them for keys to access the site, which means developers tend to pass that charge over to you, and then revoke access when you get too popular. Subsequently, most good Twitter apps tend to be on the pricey side, Tweetbot included. Let’s start with a quick look at both apps:

 

·Twitter (Free): When it first launched, the official Twitter app was a bit of a joke, but over the years it’s improved quite a bit. That said, it’s basically just a mobile version of the web site, which means it’s built more for the everyday user than for power users who use all of Twitter’s features, or manage multiple accounts. It’s straight-forward to use and doesn’t feature any bells and whistles.

·Tweetbot ($9.99): Tweetbot has been our favorite Twitter client for iPhone for a very long time, but $10 is a steep price to pay for most users. Tweetbot isn’t really made for most users though. It’s made for the type of person who spends the bulk of their day on Twitter, whether it for work or out of a deep-seated obsession with the social network. Tweetbot has a good amount of customization options for the interface, alongside a handful of ways to get a better Twitter experience by tweaking the content of your feed.

Assuming that the $10 price tag on Tweetbot isn’t enough to turn you away outright, picking between the two really depends on how you use Twitter.

 

The official Twitter app is about as vanilla as an experience as you can get. Open it up and you’ll find an interface similar to the web site, with tabs on the bottom for your notifications, moments, DMs, and your profile tab. Functionality in the app is the same as the site as well. You can’t alter any of this. You can’t change the tabs, the colors, or even adjust the font size. With the Twitter app, what you see is what you get.

 

Conversely, Tweetbot has a variety of customization options. For example, the bottom tab bar has two buttons on the right that you can swap out for whatever function you want: activity (which includes mentions, replies, favorites, and new follower information), search, profile, likes, mute filters, or lists. If you use lists to tame your Twitter feed, having access to them in the tab bar makes your life easier. The official Twitter app tucks those lists behind several taps. If you’re using Tweetbot on an iPad or a iPhone 6 Plus, you also get support for columns in landscape mode, which lets you see two tabs side-by-side. Tweetbot also allows you to chose between a couple fonts, swap between username or full name for your timeline, alter the image size in your feed, and even customize the avatars. There’s a dark mode included if you prefer to do your tweeting late at night in a dark room.

 

Tweetbot also has extremely customizable notifications, so you can tweak them so you only get the notifications you want. Tweetbot has

options for links too, allowing you to open links in Tweetbot, Chrome, or Safari, and even includes a reader view that strips away the visual styling of an article.

 

In the end, if you want an app you can customize, Tweetbot’s the one you’re looking for. The official Twitter app doesn’t allow you to change anything.