Twitter for Mac is dead and full of bugs - thanks, Elon

Elon Musk’s turbulent acquisition of Twitter - and the resultant mass gutting of its operational staff - has left Twitter for Mac in dire waters. The app hasn’t received a single update since Musk took over and lacks a lot of the new features introduced under his leadership - although, for some people, this might not be such an awful thing.

Twitter’s dedicated desktop app for macOS has been around for several years and has had fairly sporadic support, although in 2019 the app returned with a new full-fat design based on Twitter’s iPad codebase.

We can’t blame Musk’s staff purge entirely for the Mac version’s lack of attention, as the pre-Musk version of the Twitter for Mac app wasn’t always kept up to date - not as much as users would’ve liked, anyway. Still, if you look at the App Store version history the app did at least get semi-regular updates. The current dry spell starts from October last year to now, the same month Musk took over.

The last update for Twitter to Mac was on October 7, 2022; Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter on October 27 the same year, and immediately began mass layoffs. I have to wonder if he even knows whether or not he fired the staff responsible for keeping the Mac app updated.

Infestation 

Today the Twitter for Mac app lacks several features offered on the web and mobile versions, including support for Twitter Spaces, being able to sign up for Twitter subscriptions, and any support for Twitter Blue and its exclusive perks.

Looking past what’s missing, the app is also full of bugs - verging on becoming unusable in the near future. The app consistently crashes, the timeline doesn’t update reliably, and there's no guarantee your tweets will be posted. Even if you hate the new updates brought on by Musk and don’t want to see them come to Mac, the fact is that the overall reliability of the app has completely fallen apart. I tried to download the app on my own Mac to test it out and it simply refused to install, so… there’s that.

I won’t hold my breath for an update to the Twitter for Mac app anytime soon. The app is simply another unfortunate victim of engineering staff cuts at the social media giant, and that’s unlikely to change for a while. Maybe when the new CEO joins we can expect either a funeral or revival for the app, but until then we just have to sit and wait.

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