Twitterrific 5 for Twitter

It’s remarkable that a service so apparently simple as Twitter – limited to people just sending messages no more than 140 characters long – can spawn client apps so different that it’s possible to hold an almost fanatical opinion about which one is best. So while we’ll declare up front that Tap! still prefers Tweetbot – its power, its flexibility, its often-hidden but always clever features – we can still appreciate the appeal of Twitterrific, especially the major new version of it that we’re reviewing here.

One of the best things about Twitterrific always has been, and remains, the (optional, but on by default) unified timeline view. Here, rather than splitting replies and mentions into a separate tab as in most apps, they’re shown in among the rest of the tweets in your timeline – just colour-coded to make them obvious. For many, this is reason enough to use Twitterrific, and we understand why – it makes skimming through your stream fast and convenient.

And despite the fact that Twitterrific feels clean and polished almost to the point where it seems to lack any sort of cleverness and power, there are little tricks hiding away behind the simple, tweet-showcasing interface. You can, for example, swipe one way on a tweet to reply to it, or the other to view a conversation, and there’s support not only for ‘read later’ services such as Instapaper, but also the ability to keep your timeline in sync across devices – even platforms – using iCloud or Tweet Marker.

It’s all very pretty and pleasant, and you can adjust the font, size, density of text, and switch between black and white themes easily.

It remains a flagship app for iOS, but we say again: if you’re a real power user who manages two or more Twitter accounts, we still recommend Tweetbot for you. Twitterrific lacks mute filters, for example, and even Push notifications – though you can use Boxcar to add them.