iCloud Sync is a feature that landed last Friday in Tweetbot version 2.2. There’s been a few questions about how it works and some have had issues getting it up and running. Hopefully this post will clear things up for some of you.
What is iCloud Sync?
With Tweetbot v2.2 or later, your mute filters and direct message read/unread status will be synced across all instances of Tweetbot. So if you mute someone on your iPhone, they will also be muted on your iPad. The same goes for direct messages. Read a DM in one place and it will be marked as read on your other devices.
Another feature of iCloud sync is keeping your timeline position in sync across your devices. This allows you to pick up where you left off reading in your timeline when going between them. In the past we’ve had Tweetmarker support which is a free third party service that allowed you to sync your timeline with any twitter client that supported this service. Tweetmarker is still an option for those who need it, however for everyone else, syncing your read position via iCloud is enabled by default. While it sometimes takes up to 30 seconds to sync, it works brilliantly.
What is the blue bookmark icon for?
This icon shows you the tweet that has been bookmarked as the last read position. However since this icon has confused so many people, we have removed it and will no longer show in Tweetbot v2.3.
I can’t get iCloud Sync to work at all. Help?
For most it should just work. But some of you might have altered the default configuration of Tweetbot and iCloud which prevent this feature to work properly. Here are a few steps to take:
- In the iOS settings, go to iCloud and make sure you are logged into the service (with the same iCloud account on both devices)
- In the iOS settings, go to iCloud and make sure “Documents & Data” are enabled. If “Use Cellular” is turned off, iCloud Sync may not work if you are not on a wifi network.
- In Tweetbot, go to your Settings -> Username (under Account Settings) -> Sync and make sure iCloud is selected on both devices for the same account
- If it’s still not working, try rebooting your device. The next step would be to try re-installing Tweetbot.
If you are still having issues, there’s not much more we can say to help besides asking you to try going through these steps again. We don’t have any access to iCloud itself so it’s hard to troubleshoot the issue any further.
There’s been a lot of rumors going around lately that Apple is rejecting applications that send out device UDIDs but there’s not been any direct confirmation from Apple that this is a new policy. Well this morning we just got that confirmation in the form of a rejection.
Now this isn’t a particularly big deal for us since we already had code in place, for Tweetbot 2.3, that removes the need for UDID. It was a simple matter of moving that code back into 2.2 and re-submitting to Apple. We had a fixed version updated and uploaded to Apple within 2 hours of getting this message and are once again waiting for approval. If you are an app developer and depend on UDID for any functionality it’s time to migrate away from it, sooner or later Apple will catch you.
Why did we use UDIDs? We used them only for our push notification services in order to be able to match up a given device to its push notification settings. This allowed us to restore push notifications settings after Tweetbot was deleted and re-installed. With this new change in place this is no longer possible, if you delete and re-install Tweetbot you’ll have to setup your push notification settings again. Your device’s UDID never went anywhere besides our push notification services and has never been shared with anyone.
We are excited to announce the release of Tweetbot 2.1. As of this post, the iPhone version is still waiting for review in the App Store queue, but the iPad version has been approved and here’s what’s new:
- iPad graphics optimized for the new iPad’s retina display
- Streaming (when on WiFi with settings to disable it)
- The “new tweets” sound is now limited to mentions, DM’s, and new tweets via pull-to-refresh
- Double-tapping on the timeline tab button takes you to last read tweet before going to the top
- Improvements to the Tweetmarker service
- Camera+ 3.0 Capturing/Editing Support
- Bug fixes related to direct messages
- Many other bug fixes
Tweetbot for iPad is now version 2.1
Since we plan to release updates to both the iPhone and iPad apps in parity, we decided to bump the iPad version up to 2.1. Both apps share a lot of underlying code so it only makes sense that their version numbers are in sync.
Streaming
We are excited to announce streaming in Tweetbot for the iPhone and iPad. What is streaming you ask? Instead of pull-to-refresh to check for new tweets or waiting for the 5 minute auto-refresh to take place, tweets appear instantly in your timeline as they are published.
There are a few limitations to streaming which Twitter has put in place:
- Streaming only works over WiFi. Tweetbot will automatically turn streaming on and off depending on your network status.
- Streaming is limited to running on three versions of Tweetbot at a given time per user account.
iPad version ready for Retina
Tweetbot 2.1 for the iPad is now retina-ready for the upcoming new iPad. Just like you, we can’t wait to see how Tweetbot will look on the new retina display.
New Camera+ 3.0 Support
With the release of Taptaptap’s Camera+ 3.0, you can now use Cam+ to edit or take photos for Tweetbot. If you have Cam+ 3.0 installed on your device, there will be new options when you are in the menu to add an image to a tweet.
As the old saying goes “You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs”, well with an application as complex as Tweetbot and as many changes as we made to 2.0 a few bugs will get by. We’ve submitted Tweetbot 2.0.1 for iPhone and 1.0.1 for iPad and are waiting approval but we wanted to list out some of the bugs that we fixed for that release.
Fixed:
* DMs not working for iOS 4.x devices.
* Lists losing their positions.
* TweetMarker not working properly.
* Arabic, Thai, possibly other keyboards not functioning correctly.
* Video upload settings lost on restart.
We have no control over how fast Apple approves the update, but we’re hoping that it’ll be sometime late next week.
It’s been awhile since our last major Tweetbot update, but today we are proud to announce Tweetbot 2.0 for the iPhone! We hope the wait was worth it. Tweetbot 2.0 is a free upgrade for current users.
So What’s New?
This version comes with many significant improvements to the Timeline and Direct Messages. Here are the major changes in more detail:
- Updated timeline view
- Image thumbnails in timeline
- Links now colored and single-tappable
- “Retweeted by” bar now integrated and tappable
- Cell colors adjusted for better contrast
- New direct message view.
- Redesigned “New Tweets” bar (Can be dismissed by tap and configured in Settings > Display)
- Timed auto-refresh (timeline, mentions, and DM’s will refresh every 5 minutes)
- Readability added as mobilizer service
- Much improved tweet replies view
- Links in user’s bio now tappable
- “Huge” font size option in Settings > Display
- Improved scrolling performance
