Tweetbot loses streaming, activity/stats tab, and Apple Watch app over Twitter API change

Zac Hall | Aug 15 2018 - 12:33 pm PT

Tapbots has released an updated version of Tweetbot for iPhone and iPad that removes or degrades lots of useful features due to Twitter’s API change set to occur tomorrow. Due to the API changes, Tweetbot’s Apple Watch app which focused largely on showing alert activity has also been removed.

Here’s what Tapbots says about the new version in the latest release notes:

On August 16th Twitter will disable parts of their public interface that we use in Tweetbot. Because Twitter has chosen not to provide alternatives to these interfaces we have been forced to disable or degrade certain features. We’re sorry about this, but unfortunately this is totally out of our control.

Timeline streaming on WiFi is now disabled. Your timelines will now refresh automatically every 1-2 minutes instead.

Push notifications for Mentions and Direct Messages will now be delayed by a few minutes.

Push notifications for Likes, Retweets, Follows and Quotes have been disabled. We’ll be investigating bring some of these back in the future.

Activity and Stats tabs have been removed.

Watch app, which depended heavily on Activity data, has been removed.

Twitter’s API change will affect all third-party clients on every platform unfortunately, and Twitter’s primary solution — its website — is not a feature parity replacement. Expect the same changes to hit Tweetbot for Mac soon; Twitter discontinued its own Mac app before making the API change.