10 Free Apps to Instantly Elevate Your Twitter Experience

Twitter offers the ability to schedule tweets in advance, but it is limited. You can create tweets and schedule them when you want, but you can’t have a clear picture of what will go out when. Professional social media management software, such as Buffer(Opens in a new window)allows you to schedule several posts in advance in a way that makes it easy to view and control.

Most social media management apps are overkill for people with a Twitter account for personal use, but Buffer is not. There is a free version that allows you to manage up to three accounts. The calendar view lets you not only schedule tweets in advance, but also see when they’ll go out, and you can drag and drop tweets to reschedule them. I use the app to schedule tweets with links to my articles so I don’t have to put out five such posts at once. Buffer offers more than enough power for most people, and you can always upgrade if the free version isn’t enough.

Harpy for Twitter(Opens in a new window) (free; Pro version(Opens in a new window) for $4.49) is a brand new Twitter client for Android that’s customizable and beautiful. It’s so new that as of this writing it’s technically in an open beta period, so anyone can use it even though it’s not considered a finished product. I like it because it’s much, much faster than the official Twitter client, and a media tab lets you browse only images that are in your timeline. Although still in beta, Harpy is much faster and more stable than the official Twitter client. I can’t recommend it enough.

A dedicated troll campaign can quickly render Twitter unusable (trust me). All it takes is one prominent person to make an accusation, warranted or not, and your mentions are full of people joining in the “fun”. It’s not a superficial problem, and it’s especially bad if you’re part of a marginalized community.

MegaBlock(Opens in a new window) is a free tool that can help in such cases. This allows you to automatically block anyone who liked a particular tweet, which can be very useful when a toxic tweet is the source of a backlash. What MegaBlock does is obvious, extreme, but extremely effective in the case of a coordinated harassment campaign.

If you spend more time reading threads than writing them, the free Thread Reader(Opens in a new window) is an app worth exploring. Thread Reader grabs every link on Twitter and turns it into full text that’s much easier to read. You copy the link to the first message in a thread and paste it into a field on the Thread Reader website; or you can reply to any tweet in a thread by saying “@threadreaderapp unroll.” Result? Tweets are turned into an article. Thread Reader offers a Premium subscription for $3 per month or $30 per year that allows you to archive threads in PDF, receive real-time alerts, and support the developers of this app.

Tweetbot(Opens in a new window) (free to download; 99 cents per month or $5.99 per year) is a fantastic Twitter client for macOS, iPhone, and iPad. It’s uncluttered, fast, and generally works the way a Twitter client on an Apple device should. Plus, it has advanced filtering features and the ability to view multiple columns at once.

Among the standout features in macOS are keyboard shortcuts, which make it possible to browse your timeline without ever touching your mouse or keyboard, but the main appeal for most users will be how simple everything feels.

All of the apps mentioned in this list can’t notify you when other people on Twitter retweet or like your posts, and some features, including polls, aren’t available due to limitations in Twitter’s API. This may change as Twitter updates its API, but if not having notifications is a deal breaker, you might want to think twice about using third-party Twitter apps. But there is another option.

TweetDeck(Opens in a new window) (free) is a power user version of Twitter that is provided by Twitter itself and therefore does not have the same limitations as third-party applications. This web-only app supports multiple Twitter accounts and lets you create a dashboard with columns where you can track timelines, notifications, and searches all at once.

And, if you want more customization, Tweeten(Opens in a new window) (free, donations accepted) is a desktop client for Windows (through Windows 10, but not Windows 11), macOS, and Chrome that places TweetDeck in a dedicated window. At first glance, it looks like nothing more than TweetDeck in a new window, but dig into the settings and you’ll find customizations including font size and column width, along with features like GIF search and desktop notifications which you can interact with without opening the application. It’s the best desktop client for power users right now.

Tweetz(Opens in a new window) (free, donations accepted) is a minimal Twitter client for Windows that stays out of your way so you can focus on your timeline, which it puts in a dedicated window. No ads or other distractions – you can just scroll and read tweets. Images and videos load in a separate window and you customize the display in all sorts of ways, choosing for example whether you want to see profile pictures or changing the font size.

In a typical way(Opens in a new window) (free with paid accounts starting at $10/month) makes composing a Twitter thread as easy as typing paragraphs in a word processor. Just press Enter twice to indicate when a new tweet should start. There’s support for adding images and links, and you can also preview how your Twitter thread will look before you publish it. Paid accounts add tweet scheduling, analytics, support for video uploads, auto-replay, and other features.