Tapbots has released an update to its popular Tweetbot client for Twitter, removing features that will no longer be supported as of today’s Twitter API changes. Twitter announced changes to its APIs last year — a move that was met with protests by developers of third-party Twitter clients, and while the company later extended its deadline, it offered no leeway in allowing third-party app developers to continue using many of the streaming and notification features that they had come to rely on.
In the release notes for Tweetbot, Tapbots notes that “because Twitter has chosen not to provide alternatives to these interfaces we have been forced to disable or degrade certain features” and that the matter is out of its control. this includes not only the popular live timeline streaming feature — users will now be limited to 1-2 minute refresh intervals rather than live updates — but also delays push notifications for mentions and direct messages, and removes them entirely for likes, retweets, follows, and quotes.
Ina addition, the Activity and Stats tabs and the Apple Watch app are casualties of the new changes, as the latter depended heavily on the Activity data that is no longer available to third-party apps. Although Tapbots notes that it will be investigating how to bring some features back in the future, it seems this will depend heavily on finding workarounds in Twitter’s more limited API, and it’s unclear whether this will be successful, or, if so, for how long.
