Twitter’s Revamped Mac App Finally Arrives

As promised earlier this fall at Twitter’s developer conference Flight, the company’s long-neglected Mac application has been updated today with a host of new features that put the app more on par with Twitter’s other applications for mobile and web. Specifically, the revamped Mac app now includes support for things like inline video playback, GIFs in the timeline, muting, group Direct Messages, “quoting” tweets, and more. It also introduces the option for a new, darker theme and a Today Center Widget which puts Twitter highlights on your desktop.

And finally, Twitter’s Mac app will now display “hearts” instead of “stars” – reflecting the recently controversial shift in the terminology and iconography for Twitter’s favoriting mechanism.

Twitter 4.0, as the updated app is called, isn’t just a collection of added features, though – it also offers a new design with changes to its icons, buttons, and interactions, the company says. Even the desktop icon has changed to a round icon from the previous more square-ish one.

Twitter had not stated when, precisely, the new Mac client would arrive at the time of its reveal this October, only saying that it was due in a “few months.” That had many speculating that the updated app would ship before year-end. And just in the nick of time, it did.

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Many users today interact with Twitter on their desktop computers, which is why it was difficult to see the Twitter Mac application languishing for so long with no updates or improvements. However, that also allowed room for other competitors to gain traction on the desktop, including popular third-party Twitter client Tweetbot, for example.

It’s worthing pointing out that the Twitter Mac app isn’t yet feature-complete with Twitter’s other platforms –  one notable new feature that appears to be missing in the Twitter Mac app is support for polls. But at least Twitter Mac users starting today will have an app that doesn’t feel as outdated as before.

While it’s good to see the Mac app finally getting some attention, it’s unclear how important the desktop app is to the company. Case in point: TechCrunch heard that this version of the Twitter app was actually built by contractors, and not in-house. We’ve reached out to Twitter for comment on this matter, and will update if we hear back.