Twitter Brings Its iOS App to the Mac With Apple’s Catalyst

Twitter is back to making an app for the Mac. The company released a new Twitter for Mac app last night, but it’s only available to those running macOS Catalina. And yes — there’s a catch.

This new app is built using Apple’s new Catalyst technology in macOS that allows iOS app developers to bring their apps to the Mac. The idea is no different than Microsoft’s original UWP idea which allowed app developers to make one app that works across all types of Windows 10 devices. Apple’s new system is just getting started, and the company expects to unify the iOS and Mac App Stores by 2021.

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But just like Microsoft’s UWP, Apple’s Catalyst is off to a bad start. Twitter for Mac is the first major iOS app to arrive on the Mac via this tech, and although the app does work pretty well, the experience is still very unfinished. Because the app is primarily made for touch input, some parts of the app don’t work just as well on a Mac. When you are entering the password in the login screen, for example, you can’t just press enter to login to your account — instead, you have to tap the “Login” button. So yes, the app does work, but parts of the app look and act really weird when using a mouse and a keyboard. Oh and, the whole app looks very weird when you try to use it in full-screen.

Twitter’s new Mac app can be downloaded here if you are running macOS Catalina.

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Conversation 4 comments

  • dontbeevil

    11 October, 2019 - 7:51 am

    <p>I cannot even write about more news about catalyna and catalyst?</p><p>theverge.com/2019/10/8/20904603/netflix-ipad-app-macos-catalyst-catalina-apple-port-streaming-download</p><p>tyler.io/broken/</p>

  • rosyna

    11 October, 2019 - 10:12 am

    <p>It’s the iPad version, and the iPad version is crap on full screen too (only really usable when in multitasking mode).</p><p><br></p><p>(A Twitter problem, not a platform problem)</p>

  • codymesh

    11 October, 2019 - 10:41 am

    <p>why would one want to use this "app" over the Twitter PWA which is actually functional even on the Mac?</p>

  • dontbeevil

    14 October, 2019 - 2:48 am

    <p>one more interesting article that probably will never see here</p><p>engadget.com/2019/10/13/safari-in-ios-sends-safe-browsing-data-to-tencent/</p>

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