That little blue bird that's been lying low on MacBook docks is about to start fluttering again.
At Twitter's annual developer conference, Flight, the company remembered that it indeed has a Mac app for its social media network.
Historically, Twitter's Mac app has gotten none to very little love. For almost two whole years, from 2011 to 2013, the app received a total of zero updates. Things started looking hopeful for 2014 and 2015 when the app got one update for each year. Now, Twitter's next update to its almost- orgotten Mac app is the biggest one yet.
The update will give the app a fresh new look with a dark theme in the app's "dark mode."
Beyond the superficial, the update will also expand the app's functionalities by supporting some of Twitter's latest new features, such as the in-line viewing of Vine clips and videos as well as GIF playback. Hardcore users will also be able to reply to tweets that are in line with their timeline. For more behind-the-scenes communication, users can also create and tweet within closed-group Direct Messages and even send photos via Direct Message.
Luckily, Twitter remembered that Apple also updated OS X to El Capitan. The soon-to-be refreshed app is optimized to work with the latest version of OS X. Users will also be able to view their interaction highlights within Notification Center.
Even with all of its new bells and whistles, Twitter is still missing a key feature popular on other third-party competitors' apps: synced bookmarking. Other Twitter apps will allow a user to check their timeline on their desktop, leave their desk, and get back to where they left off on their timeline on their phones.
Twitter does have a lot of ground to cover if it hopes to compete against more popular Mac-based Twitter apps, notably Tweetbot. If anything, Twitter's Mac app has the upper hand since it will obviously get first dibs on integrating Twitter's latest features and porting them over to the desktop app.
Still, the company says this update won't be coming any time soon. Twitter's Senior Director of Product, Jeff Seibert, didn't give a specific date for the app's update to roll out to users. At best, we can expect to finally tweet in dark mode as early as this year.
Photo: Christopher Corneschi | Flickr
