Twitter corrects course on chronological timeline mistake

Twitter earlier this year rolled out an update that forced the algorithm timeline onto the homepage of its mobile app. After several complaints, the platform decided to reverse its decision and users can once again set the “Following” timeline as their default.

Twitter again lets users view timeline in chronological order as default

With the Twitter app update in January, the app split the Home between two tabs: For You and Following. While the latter works as a regular timeline of the accounts you follow with tweets in chronological order, the For You tab shows tweets suggested by algorithms. But the worst part of the update is that there was no way to set the Following tab as default.

However, Twitter is now changing this behavior. The company has revealed via its Twitter Support profile that the latest version of the app for iOS and Android now remembers which tab the user chose last. As a result, Twitter will always show that tab first, even after closing and reopening the app.

As noted by The Verge, this makes the app work “mostly as you’d expect.” Although there isn’t a clear option to choose one of the tabs as the default, at least the app will no longer switch back to the For You tab every time after being closed. Even with the update, users can still pin lists to the top bar. However, these lists can’t be set as defaults for the Home.

It’s worth noting that this is neither the first nor the second time that Twitter has experimented with different timelines. Back in 2019, a similar feature had already been added to iOS. However, the platform eventually scrapped the idea and went back to the regular timeline since the new one wasn’t well accepted by users.

More about Twitter

A few days ago, Twitter also fixed a bug in its iOS app that showed all image previews in 16:9 aspect ratio. All these changes come after the company announced last month that it has officially banned all third-party Twitter clients, and that its API no longer has a free tier.

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