There was a lot of buzz with the release of the Mac App Store that official Twitter application for Mac1 would be released. The hope is that it would finally contain support for official retweets and lists, both items users of Tweetie for Mac have been waiting on for over the year. Despite these shortcomings, Tweetie has been a favorite amongst many2 for quite some time.
I stumbled across YoruFukurou on the website FreeMacWare back in August. I installed it sometime in the fall on my 2nd computer and before long it had replaced echofon on my primary computer. Generally when I come across a new Twitter client I give it a whirl. I tried Hibari when it first started circulating. At the time it was lacking features other clients had but for me it ultimately had one dealbreaker, no easy way to find where I left off reading. This is just one of the many features YoruFukurou had to offer.
Features Commonly Found Elsewhere
There are plenty of features in YoruFukurou found in other Twitter clients, but what I ultimately seem to love about it is that it seems to have every feature I could want. First and foremost is some kind of read/unread indicator on tweets. A lot of people don’t like this, but I find it invaluable when I re-open my twitter client to figure out where I left off. I like to read recent tweets as much as new tweets. So when I open my twitter client and it loads the last 200 tweets3 I always go back and read them.
Some smaller features that are included: automatically expanding shortened URLs in your timeline4, maintaining scroll position and built-in image preview.
Features Not Commonly Found Elsewhere
One of my favorite features of of YoruFukurou is the ability to activate “one sided follow badges.” Basically this puts an small broken heart icon in the bottom right corner of people’s avatars to indicate that they do not follow you back. This is useful because it quickly lets you know if you can DM someone and also because sometimes you want to direct something5 to a person who may not have seen you post it earlier, but aren’t sure if they would have seen it already.
Another huge feature is built-in filtering. There are four ways to filter: by user, keyword, regular expression or application. This means it’s possible to filter/block virtually anything. What sets this apart from other Twitter clients with filters is the fact that it will apply it not just to future tweets, but it will remove tweets from the app that meet the criteria. This is great if you are watching a DVRed live event and want to keep watching and following Twitter without getting spoiled. The fact that the filter applies to already loaded tweets means that if you forget to turn the filter on you can make up for it.
I also enjoy the keyboard shortcuts to jump between your timeline, “single user mode” and conversation mode. Single user mode just shows you the timeline for the currently selected user. This is great if you are thinking about replying to older tweet but want to make sure they user hasn’t already posted a follow-up. Conversation mode will show you the tweet being replied to and any earlier extras that are related.
It’s not unusual to see Twitter clients give you the option to display either the person’s Twitter username or their “real name” but not every client does that. This is useful when you don’t always remember who is who and their avatar changes.
YoruFukurou also has tabs across the top of your timeline for Timeline, Mentions, DMs and Favorites. This tab bar can be customized to show things in a different order, or can be replaced with user-created tabs. These can be a user-created Twitter list, the official Twitter search or a custom filtered tab using the same criteria for filtering tweets6. This feature is very similar to what TweetDeck offers without taking up so much screen real estate.
A couple of minor features. The auto-complete of a username7 is a dropdown list that also does prediction. It seems that some clients do auto-complete but don’t have the dropdown8. Also, the colors in your timeline are customizable. So if you want the font of your own tweets or mentions to be a different color, you can.
Minor Gripes
I haven’t been able to find many things I don’t like. I tried to use the “absolute ” time instead of the “relative” time9 but the absolute time doesn’t show the day/date even if it was yesterday. So if you leave the client open for an extended period of time10 and want to jump to say, tweets from the current day, there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to do so.
No matter how long I use it, I hit ‘R’ when I want to reply, but that refreshes the timeline11.
Although it isn’t a bad looking application, it certainly doesn’t have the same eye candy or polish as some other Twitter clients.
Wrap-Up
I have long been searching for a Twitter client to meet all my needs. I have tried the popular ones12 but always end up finding something about them I don’t like. With Tweetie, it was the lack of features. With TweetDeck it was the non-native Mac-ness. With echofon, it was the cost, the lack of real-name display and the inability to distinguish read/unread tweets.
YoruFukurou has seemed to meet my every need. The read/unread indicator, follow back icon and the built-in filtering are such great features. And all of the features I like about other Twitter apps seem to be here as well.
It’s not the flashiest looking application out there, but it’s stable, feature-rich and free. All good qualities that make YoruFukurou my favorite Twitter application.
- a.k.a. Tweetie 2 [↩]
- Not me, as personally the no official retweet was a dealbreaker for me [↩]
- Or whatever the number it loads it [↩]
- This makes tweets appear longer but lets me know where I am going before clicking on known shorteners [↩]
- A link perhaps [↩]
- By user, keyword, regular expression or application [↩]
- For when you are replying [↩]
- For those times when you can’t remember exactly how to spell it [↩]
- I’d rather see “12:32 PM” than “1 hour ago” [↩]
- Say 12 hours [↩]
- You just hit ‘Enter’ to reply [↩]
- Tweetie, TweetDeck, echofon [↩]
