Is Tweetbot for Mac accessible?

By Kilroy, 29 December, 2021

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

I've recently started using Tweetbot on iOS (which has some minor issues, but none that are deal breakers for me), and was wondering if anybody has any recent experience of the Mac version?

Unlike the iOS app, there is no trial available, and I don't want to throw down $$$s on an app only to find that it's unusable.

Thanks for any experiences or information that you can share ☺️

Options

Comments

By Quin on Tuesday, December 28, 2021 - 17:40

It indeed is accessible, and has some cool features. It just has a few minor issues, like there's no feedback for liking / unliking tweets, but its definitely usable.

By Kilroy on Tuesday, December 28, 2021 - 17:40

In reply to by Quin

Thanks, this is great to hear.

I currently use Twitterrific on the Mac. It's okay. Accessible, but a little ‘busy’ to navigate and use. It also doesn't seem to get a whole lot of love from its developer in terms of updates and new features. So, this all adds up to me being itchy to try something different.

If anybody has used both of these apps, I would love to hear how you think they compare and which you opted for.

By Piotr Machacz on Tuesday, December 28, 2021 - 17:40

I have both apps, and like you would like to find something better than Twitterrific, which does work relatively well has some UI decisions that could be better.

I really like Tweetbot's UI., which has 2 tables, one is a sidebar which has all your timelines and the other has the contents of whatever you selected, everything else can be accessed with menus or hotkeys. It's also a more actively developed app which has started switching to the newer Twitter API which gives things like streaming or attaching poles to your tweet.

There are a few accessibility annoyances that are keeping me from switching to it full time for now though.

Firstly, while I don't much care for how Mac Twitterrific reads posts, Tweetbot is worse, including the timestamp twice before the tweet text itself. An example of how VO reads a tweet is below:

42m 42 minutes ago, Picard management tip: Tell good stories. The right story can persuade, inspire, or illuminate., PicardTips, Picard Tips , retweet or quote button, like tweet button, user actions button, reply to tweet button, actions and sharing button, retweeted by Joseph King

There is no way to read media descriptions either. If a tweet has them, they're not spoken in the timeline and not visible if you open the media attachment. Something else that doesn't read at all, which is more serious, is direct messages. The most recent message is read if you're looking at the list of conversations, but once you click into one only the author gets read in the list of messages. Lastly, the filter dialog which lets you manage filtering rules has a lot of unlabeled controls so it's a bit difficult to use.

All that being said, despite Tapbot's shoddy record with accessibility I'm cautiously optimistic we might see some changes. The iOS app, while also not perfect has recently gained some big improvements, and I tweeted them about the Mac app's problems so we'll see what happens.

By Quin on Tuesday, December 28, 2021 - 17:40

I switch between the two, because I really like Tweetbot because of it's notifications, even for home, it's general UI, etc, but it has some issues. The biggest one is that you can't read or write DMs properly. If you move from the text field it dies, and you can't read DMs at all. I wrote to the developers via email telling them about this, as well as a few other issues so we can hope it's fixed. Twitterrific has some issues too though. For example, the weird bug where sometimes text gets truncated or how multiple related tweets from the same user in a row doesn't read. I can confidently say that if Tweetbot fixed all it's issues, I'd fully switch.

If you're okay with having the absolute time read instead of the relative one, toggling it in settings will fix timestamps being read. That said I generally like how the iOS Tweetbot reads a lot better anyways, especially because everything is a VO action, so let's hope they can put that on the Mac.

By Kilroy on Tuesday, December 28, 2021 - 17:40

Thanks all for the great information.

Thanks also for directing the developer towards this thread. Hopefully this and the previous reports will result in further accessibility enhancements.

Regardless, you guys have convinced me in to dropping a few $$$s to satisfying my curiosity ☺️

By Kilroy on Tuesday, December 28, 2021 - 17:40

I now have Tweetbot installed and mostly setup as I would want it. And, for the most part, it's proving to be a better fit for my use case )which is primarily lists and saved searches) than Twitterrific.

However, getting it setup for my use case needed sighted help, as adding and managing columns is completely inaccessible with VoiceOver, as it involves a locating and dragging a UI element which only becomes visible when you hover your mouse pointer in the right place. Even when on screen, this control remains invisible to VoiceOver.

Other than this, I've had to add custom labels to a few unlabelled buttons and resign myself to the knowledge that when composing a tweet the UI element that allows you to select which account to use is also completely invisible to VoiceOver.

Despite these issues and those already mentioned above by others, the early signs are that Tweetbot will prove a better fit and experience for my use case.

So, thank you again to everybody who has contributed to this thread.

By Piotr Machacz on Tuesday, December 28, 2021 - 17:40

I hadn't set up a second account in Tweetbot so wasn't aware of these issues you described, but thanks for letting people know here. Hopefully the developers will also see your comment.

By Quin on Tuesday, December 28, 2021 - 17:40

That was another thing I couldn't figure out, and in fact didn't know you could even do it. What does the feature let you do? Would it, for example, let you move the timestamp after the text?

By Kilroy on Tuesday, December 28, 2021 - 17:40

In reply to by Quin

Out of the box the app has a sidebar and a single column. As you know, the sidebar is used to control what timeline/content is displayed in the column. By adding additional columns, you can essentially ‘pin’ specific timelines or content so that they are always accessible and automatically refreshed.

In my case, I have added 3 additional columns - one for a list, one for a saved search, and one for the timeline of a second account. The latter allows me to monitor that account without having to switch to it. I suspect that this use won't stick though, and I will end up using it for another of my saved searches.

This setup has allowed me to hide the sidebar (with the first column set to display another of my lists), leaving me with a four column app layout. As each of these is a table, I can use VO+J to quickly move between them. For my use case, this works very well - better than Twitterrific does.

A better and more complete explanation of columns and how they are managed can be found here https://tapbots.com/tweetbot/mac/tips/