Twitter 5.0 update brings refreshed user interface
Twitter for Android has gotten another big upgrade, with the company bringing yet another refresh to their clean user interface. Things look a tad more bright and a tad more flat, and they’ve compressed a lot of the menu options to make more room for viewing the timeline. Said change brings us a new layout for navigating your Tweets that you might find a bit weird to get used to at first.
For starters, you have three main tabs:
- Home: This is where all the Tweets and ReTweets from the people you follow show up, just like a traditional timeline. This view will show conversations in-line, so you won’t have to hunt down a secondary menu option.
- Discover: This is where Twitter shoves all the Tweets they think you’ll like, suggestions of people to follow, trending topics and more.
- Activity: This is where you go to stalk your friends (rather, where you go to see what they’re saving as favorites, who they’ve started following and more).
You might notice that list doesn’t include anything to view mentions. That’s because Twitter has set all that stuff up under a new Notifications section that’ll show you everything that is pertinent to you, including mentions, people who have started following you, people who have saved or ReTweeted your Tweets, when someone has sent you a direct message and more.
The Notifications icon will light up with a number whenever there is something new for you, and since it’s always in view no matter which timeline you’re in it’s never too hard to figure out if something is waiting for you.
Finally, Twitter for Android has gotten a unique feature that allows you to be notified whenever any specific user Tweets. Simply tap the star icon on their profile page, and you’ll get a notification whenever they send their 140 characters out to the world. It’s great for keeping tabs on people that you might otherwise miss in situations where your timeline is being flooded by other bits of nonsense. You can find the new upgrade over in the Google Play Store for free.