This Week's Sponsor:

Kolide

Ensure that if a device isn’t secure it can’t access your apps.  It’s Device Trust for Okta.


Twitterrific for iOS Adds “Edit Tweet” Button

With a relatively minor 5.7.2 update released last night, The Iconfactory added an ingenious Edit Tweet button in Twitterrific for iOS, cleverly sidestepping Twitter’s lack of official support for such functionality with a native integration.

The topic of an Edit button for Twitter has surfaced on multiple occasions over the years, but so far the company has always resisted the idea of allowing users to modify a status update that’s already been tweeted, preferring a delete mechanism that simply deletes a public tweet from a user’s account. There’s an argument to be made for the reason why it may be useful to be able to fix typos or other errors in a tweet, but as things stand today, Twitter doesn’t officially support an Edit feature, and likely won’t any time soon.

The latest Twitterrific uses the possibility to delete your own tweets to fake an Edit button that, to the end user that doesn’t know about Twitter’s stance on the matter, looks like a real editing functionality. The way the Edit button in Twitterrific works is, indeed, smart: once you’ve tweeted a message, an Edit Tweet button gets added to the tweet’s contextual menu; tap it, and the Compose screen will come up again, containing the text of the original tweet that you can edit. Twitterrific, however, isn’t actually editing the tweet: after tapping the Edit button, the original tweet gets deleted from Twitter and its contents are inserted in the screen to compose a new tweet. This gives the illusion that the original tweet is being edited, while Twitterrific is only deleting and creating tweets as allowed by the Twitter API.

Twitterrific’s Edit Tweet button is a minor touch, and nothing that couldn’t be replicated by copying a tweet, deleting it, and starting a new one. From a user experience standpoint, though, Edit Tweet serves as a shortcut and elegant workaround that gives users the ability to fix what they tweeted while saving taps. It is the kind of feature that makes sense when you see it in action, and the implementation in Twitterrific is straightforward and polished.

Twitterrific 5.7.2 is available on the App Store.

Unlock More with Club MacStories

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Choose the Club plan that’s right for you:

  • Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with app collections, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, a Club-only podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;
  • Club MacStories+: Everything that Club MacStories offers, plus exclusive content like Federico’s Automation Academy and John’s Macintosh Desktop Experience, a powerful web app for searching and exploring over 6 years of content and creating custom RSS feeds of Club content, an active Discord community, and a rotating collection of discounts, and more;
  • Club Premier: Everything in from our other plans and AppStories+, an extended version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered early, ad-free, and in high-bitrate audio.