X killed its Mac app, but the iPad app is a solid replacement

After discontinuing Twitter for Mac this week, Twitter (officially known as X) has now enabled support for running the unmodified iPad app on Apple Silicon Macs, a feature that debuted with macOS Big Sur. Although the app initially had a problem where users would get suspended for using it, it seems that the app is now safe to use.

Twitter for Mac (Catalyst)

Twitter for Mac initially debuted in 2019 alongside Apple’s new Catalyst framework in macOS Catalina. Although this wasn’t the first version of Twitter for Mac, this version was unique because Catalyst allowed Twitter’s engineers to utilize most of the codebase from the iOS app, and there aren’t a ton of modifications required for macOS compatibility. However, after Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, development on Twitter for Mac completely stopped.

This meant that the app became more and more out of touch with the rest of Twitter, both for better and for worse. Annoyingly, it meant you’d have to open the web app if you wanted to read posts over 280 characters. On the plus side, it also meant that you weren’t forced to use the new For You page. Old Twitter for Mac also has no support for any form of verification, as all “legacy” checkmarks were removed in April 2023, and the app never got support for Twitter Blue.

After nearly two years of no updates, the app was finally removed from the App Store this week, with a popup forcing people to get off the app. In reality you can simply close this popup and continue using the app if you wish, but it’s now clear that the old Catalyst app isn’t going to be supported anymore. Shortly after its removal, the iPad app showed up on the Mac App Store.

iPad apps on Apple Silicon Macs

When Apple announced the Mac transition to Apple Silicon at WWDC 2020, they announced that Apple Silicon Macs would be able to run any iPhone or iPad app, as long as the developer doesn’t opt out. Unfortunately, most of the big developers opted out. There were some workarounds to sideload iOS apps onto your Mac, but they didn’t consistently work.

Unlike Catalyst, no modification is required to get your iPad app on the Mac App Store, since Apple Silicon Macs support all iOS frameworks. Although a perfect experience isn’t guaranteed right away, it should generally be pretty stable. iPad apps on Apple Silicon Macs are a great way for smaller teams to natively support the Mac without needing to dedicate any significant amount of time to it, which is likely important to the X engineering team after a large number of layoffs occurred over the course of late 2022 and early 2023.

X for iPad (running on Mac)

The iPad app running on your Mac is pretty much what you’d expect. It’s a very iPad feeling experience, annd unlike the web app, it doesn’t utilize a ton of resources. It also properly supports push notifications, which has never worked consistently for me on the web app.

The old Twitter for Mac app became quite buggy over time, primarily because it wasn’t actively updated and became more and more out of sync with backend server changes. For example, profile banners would no longer load, searching for tweets would never yield any results, and sometimes the app would straight up freeze on you.

With the new iPad app experience, you’ll be able to utilize the past 2 years of Twitter changes, for better and for worse. Features like bookmark search, X Articles, Creator Subscriptions, replies/reactions in DMs, and all of the customization features of X Premium are now available natively on your Mac.

That being said, the iPad app isn’t perfect. As pointed out by my colleague Zac, the new iPad app doesn’t support timeline streaming. With the old Mac app, you could keep your timeline pinned to the top, and new tweets would just show up as they were made, without needing to actively interact with the app. Additionally, many interactions that you’d expect to be behind a right click are actually behind a long press, which isn’t what you’d expect on a Mac. There’s also a bug where typing into the search bar won’t actually show what you’re typing, although it’s possible that’s a macOS Sequoia bug.

Wrap Up

Overall, it’d be better if there was a truly optimized Mac app again for X. Although, I am glad that I no longer have to deal with the poorly optimized web app that’d use 1-2gb of RAM per tab, even in Safari.

Also, the suspension issue is worth mentioning. It’s quite bizarre that this “bug” even occurred, but at least the erroneous suspensions were fixed within 24 hours. I don’t fully understand how they released this app without any of the employees logging into it first, but it is what it is.

Are you happy with this new X for iPad app on Apple Silicon Macs? Were you personally impacted the suspension problem? Let us know how you feel in the comments.