Excellent Twitter client exclusively for Mac

Tweetie is now known as the official Twitter client but you can still download it here.

Even just browsing Atebit’s homepage, you can tell Tweetie is going to be good. The screenshots look delicious and the overall presentation of the site is first class. Then again, I shouldn’t be surprised because atebits brought us Scribbles which in my mind, is the best simple paint application out there for Mac.

There are two versions of Tweetie. One costs $14.95 (until 4th May) and the other, which you can download here, is completely free but is supported by a few ads that appear in your timeline. I emphasize the word “few” because they seem to be no more than one an hour at the moment.

All of Tweetie’s main functions can be found in the navigation bar along the left-hand side. This includes the fascinating search box which allows you to search keywords about what people are twittering about. I did a search for “Softonic” and it was really interesting to find out what people were talking about related to our site. This is a superb way to find like-minded Twitter users or just to find out what people are thinking about a certain topic.

The rest of the menu options are easy to work out. The speech bubble brings-up your latest tweets, the ‘@’ symbol reveals replies to tweets that have been sent to you, the envelope shows messages that have been sent to you, and finally you have the magnifying glass for the search function described above. There’s much more to Tweetie than this though. Remember when Gmail introduced threaded messages to email? Well Tweetie has done exactly the same by introducing direct message threading – direct messages are treated as ongoing conversations so you can see how each one links to the previous. The same goes for conversations.

But wait, there’s even more. In addition to all of the above, you can view user profiles and all of their tweets simply by double-clicking on their avatar with no need to visit the Twitter homepage. Also, for those that love to share webpages on Twitter, Tweetie features a bookmarklet button which can be dragged onto your browser and instantly posts the page to Tweetie when clicked. It’s the same principle as the PressThis! button you have with WordPress.

The preferences offer you the ability to change the font type and size, choose whether to show your full name or username, and which URL shortening and image posting services you’d like Tweetie to use. You can add as many accounts as you like under the accounts options which displays a list of the ones currently used by Tweetie. Finally, the advanced options allow you to record a few keyboard shortcuts to hide Tweetie and write new tweets, preview short URLs, and specify when you want Tweetie to highlight the status icon.

So what are the drawbacks? The major oversight of Tweetie is the fact that there are no tweet notifications, which seems bizarre but will surely soon be rectified. There are therefore no options for configuring sounds – Tweetie is completely silent which may be a drawback for those that love their Twitter clients to make a bit of noise now and then. There are no options to create Twitter groups or multi-party replies either although since I’ve never needed these, it’s not something I personally miss.

These are relatively minor drawbacks however and overall Tweetie is, by some margin, the best Twitter client I’ve ever used. The best thing I’ve tried on the Mac this year since Spotify.

Twitter will make API changes on August 16th that break old versions of Tweetie for Mac. This update keeps the tweets flowing.Fixes oAuth bug that affected a handful of users.Increased security around your account.Disable posting to image hosts using the deprecated authentication method.Registration no longer needed. Section removed.In accordance with the Twitter Terms of Service, on July 1st Fusion Ads will no longer be displayed.Tweets no longer say they’re from “Twitter for iPhone,” but instead “Tweetie for Mac.”An option in “advanced” to update your iChat status when you tweet.Improved Magic Mouse support.

Changes

• Twitter will make API changes on August 16th that break old versions of Tweetie for Mac. This update keeps the tweets flowing.Fixes oAuth bug that affected a handful of users.Increased security around your account.Disable posting to image hosts using the deprecated authentication method.Registration no longer needed. Section removed.In accordance with the Twitter Terms of Service, on July 1st Fusion Ads will no longer be displayed.Tweets no longer say they’re from “Twitter for iPhone,” but instead “Tweetie for Mac.”An option in “advanced” to update your iChat status when you tweet.Improved Magic Mouse support.