Twitter getting proper image support means it can almost compete with 3rd-party apps

Twitter (Image credit: iMore)

Yesterday saw the news that Twitter is testing a new feature that will improve the way its iOS app handles images. Historically, the Twitter app has struggled with such things but that's going to change. And that means the app is finally becoming a viable alternative to the amazing third-party apps in the App Store.

Almost, anyway.

Twitter has long compressed the living heck out of images and the Twitter app often crops them in a way that just plain old ruins them. As of now though, Twitter is testing improvements that will deal with that – including support for images up to 4K in resolution.

Now testing on Android and iOS: when you Tweet a single image, how the image appears in the Tweet composer is how it will look on the timeline –– bigger and better. pic.twitter.com/izI5S9VRdXNow testing on Android and iOS: when you Tweet a single image, how the image appears in the Tweet composer is how it will look on the timeline –– bigger and better. pic.twitter.com/izI5S9VRdX— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) March 10, 2021 March 10, 2021

I've long been a user of Tweetbot and I've recently been flirting with Aviary here and there, too. But as much as the Twitter app has all of those fancy things like full support for polls and cards, its butchering of images has been a deal-breaker for me. One of the deal-breakers. I still have one, which I'll get to in a minute.

If Twitter can sort out the way it handles images – and then videos – I'll be a happy boy. I might even learn to deal with ads in the timeline if it means I can use some of the official Twitter features I'm told are so great. But there is still one problem that Twitter hasn't fixed and, to my knowledge, isn't working on fixing.

That problem? The lack of timeline syncing.

I use Twitter across multiple devices and have the Tweetbot app open 24/7 on my Mac. I like being able to switch devices and have my timeline synced at all times. I don't want to miss a tweet because it could mean missing a new app release or a TestFlight that I should be getting in on. That won't do, so I need my timeline to sync.

Until Twitter adds that to its apps, I'm out. But I'll tell you what – the people working on that iOS Twitter app are making it more and more difficult to say that. Long may it continue.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.