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The best Twitter app for the iPhone isn't made by Twitter
I haven't used the official Twitter app or website for years.
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It's not that Twitter's official apps aren't good. They're just not the best.
The way I interact with Twitter is through Tweetbot, a third-party app for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac that I'd recommend to any Twitter lover. After a big update on Thursday, Tweetbot has cemented itself as a superior experience for using Twitter.
Here's why you should be using it.
In the new Tweetbot, which sells in the App Store for $4.99, you can see all of your stats, including the number of favorites, retweets, and follows you've received in a day. Under the chart, interactions like retweets and favorites are displayed.
If you tap "Activity" next to "Stats," you see a list of all the tweets that have @ mentioned your account, followed you, retweeted you, and so on.
The official Twitter app has had a similar activity view for awhile, but Tweetbot's is easier to skim at a glance.
Twitter's iPad app feels neglected compared to its iPhone app, and Tweetbot has a new design for its iPad app that blows Twitter's app out of the water.
There's a column view on the iPad in iOS 9, Apple's latest mobile operating system, which lets you have multiple parts of the app open at once. So you can direct message someone and browse your timeline on the same screen.
Because Tweetbot is a third-party app, it doesn't display ads in your timeline like you would see in Twitter's official apps.
If you're the kind of person who doesn't like missing out on tweets, then Tweetbot is meant for you. It uses Apple's iCloud to sync your timeline progress between devices, so you can pick up on your iPhone or iPad when you leave your Mac.
Twitter's apps don't have any timeline syncing, so if that's something you care about, Tweetbot is for you.
The app has a built-in muting feature that lets you enter keywords to keep them from ever appearing in your timeline, even if someone you follow tweets them.
So if you're really not into sports, you could mute the word "football."
Tweetbot also offers a number of great features, like a night mode that makes the interface dark when your device's screen brightness lowers to a certain level. Tweetbot also gives you the ability to change the size of thumbnail images and videos in your timeline.
Tweetbot costs $4.99 for the iPhone and iPad version and $12.99 on the Mac, which is a lot more than most Twitter users are probably willing to pay for such an app. But if you're unsatisfied with Twitter's official apps and want more features, Tweetbot is definitely worth the money.
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