Twitter for Mac

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on September 23, 2012

Twitter for Mac brings the iOS experience closer on the computer by eliminating the traditional title bar and relying only on sleek, side-tab navigation. The app feels native on the system, and its intuitive, simple user interface provides a great user experience, although it lacks some of the features power users will find on other Twitter feed reader apps such as Tweetdeck.

The Twitter app makes it super-easy to handle multiple accounts. As soon as users add an account, its avatar will appear on the app's sidebar. We liked the simple and effective visual notifications Twitter for Mac uses to bring its users' attention to new replies, tweets, and direct messages; it displays a notification similar to those that the dock uses, which makes it feel native.

Customization options allow users to configure different new message notifications, mentions, or tweets, either by highlighting the menu bar icon, a badge for the dock icon, or a growl notification. Users can also choose from a list of image services such as yFrog, Twitpic, and others. The Twitter for Mac user experience is great, and navigation is made super-easy: you can use your arrow keys to go up and down, and the right arrow key can be used to navigate to the Web site the tweets link to. Those using portable Mac devices will enjoy the "iOSification" of the Twitter app, as they can employ gestures to navigate anywhere within the app.

Although we liked the application's great, simple design, we have to note that Twitter for Mac has several limitations. While it works just great for navigating and posting messages to the Twitter feed, power users will miss the Add Column feature, which is useful if you are hunting a specific subject in the Twittersphere. Overall, Twitter for Mac is a well-designed and easy-to-use app most users will love.