Tapbots launches a brand new Mastodon consumer, Ivory, after Twitter kills its Tweetbot app

Tapbots, the makers of common third-party Twitter app Tweetbot that was recently killed by Twitter’s API changes, is releasing its subsequent new product. Hoping to fill the void that Tweetbot leaves behind, the corporate is now making its anticipated Mastodon consumer app Ivory accessible on the App Store as an Early Entry launch.

The “Early Entry” label is a subtitle that Tapbots placed on its launch to point there’ll nonetheless be options lacking because it debuts, the corporate informed us. Nonetheless, by launching publically on the App Retailer, Tapbots is ready to put Ivory into extra individuals’s palms after filling up the restricted variety of TestFlight slots it had for its take a look at model.

Tapbots founder Paul Haddad informed that Ivory’s App Retailer launch was authorized simply yesterday, however the firm had just a few technical points to handle round subscriptions earlier than publicizing the launch.

For longtime Tweetbot customers, Ivory will provide a well-recognized expertise. However as a substitute of serving as a consumer for Twitter’s community, the corporate has now embraced the promising open source platform Mastodon. Although not fairly as easy to make use of or perceive as Twitter, Mastodon has gained traction within the months following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.

As Twitter’s new proprietor applied controversial modifications and the positioning’s efficiency degraded at occasions, some individuals had begun on the lookout for a brand new residence to put up brief updates, as they did on Twitter. That led to a flurry of interest in new apps and other Twitter alternatives, like Mastodon. As of December, Mastodon had grown to 2.5 million monthly active users throughout some 8,600 completely different servers or, in Mastodon lingo, “cases.”

Nonetheless, some Mastodon newcomers didn’t just like the official native cellular app — particularly after utilizing the quicker, extra polished Twitter native cellular app or these from third events, like Tweetbot. That helped appeal to curiosity within the up-and-coming apps like Ivory and others being built by former Twitter third-party app developers, together with Mammoth.

Tapbots says Ivory’s characteristic set takes benefit of the dozen+ years of expertise Tapbots had in constructing its award-winning Tweetbot consumer for Twitter’s platform.

At launch, it sports activities dozens of options, starting from assist for baseline performance to intelligent bells and whistles, like having the ability to theme the app or change its icon.

The app helps a number of accounts, and allows you to view your native and federated timelines, trending posts, put up statistics, notifications and extra. It additionally permits Mastodon-specific choices that weren’t accessible on Twitter — like the flexibility so as to add content material warnings to posts — in addition to extra widespread options, like the flexibility to put up GIFs and polls.

There are different considerate touches designed to enchantment to energy customers, too, like hashtag monitoring, mute filters with regex assist and timeline filters that allow you to present or cover posts that meet sure standards you set. This might enchantment to Mastodon’s older customers, as effectively, who could wish to mute and keep away from among the posts shared by Mastodon newcomers who’re bringing Twitter’s tradition to the platform, resulting in undesirable posts with out content material warnings of their timelines.

Ivory additionally permits customers to personalize the app in different methods. Along with the filters, themes and icon decisions, customers can configure the navigation buttons on the backside of the display screen to point out them what they wish to see, by urgent down on buttons to change between tabs for various areas of the app like bookmarks, favorites, statistics, your profile, notifications, lists, search and extra.

The app moreover guarantees quick efficiency, easy scrolling and a pretty person interface and sound design.

For a debut launch, Ivory is already a reasonably sturdy consumer. Nonetheless, the corporate says it has rather more to nonetheless add to the app, together with issues like instruments for modifying your profile or modifying your posts (take that, Edit Tweet button!), in addition to others for studying the alt/description textual content for media, improved hashtags, assist for customized occasion emoji, an improved notifications tab with higher filtering, improved nav bar and a characteristic to suppress duplicate posts.

The app will generate income, as Tweetbot did, by the use of in-app subscriptions. The App Retailer lists these as costing both $1.99 per 30 days or $14.99 per yr. A “Premier” subscription can also be accessible for $24.99 per yr. The latter contains all of the options within the Professional subscription, and can later embody just a few extras, the corporate says. Haddad says the Premier tier was added primarily as a result of individuals had been asking to pay more cash to assist the corporate out, but it surely plans to incorporate just a few perks for these individuals sooner or later, together with presumably, issues like additional icons or wallpapers.

These subscriptions can be found within the Ivory app at current, and allow among the energy person options like configuring which notifications you wish to obtain, amongst different issues. Customers may also “demo” the app without cost with out committing to a subscription.

As Tweetbot’s income was reduce to zero by Twitter’s API modifications, apps like Ivory solely have a future if shoppers are keen to undertake Mastodon and subscribe to various purchasers. And since Mastodon has a a lot smaller world person base to attract from, in contrast with Twitter, Ivory’s income potential has a smaller ceiling than the corporate’s Tweetbot app as soon as did. (In the event you’re feeling nostalgic, visit its memorial page.)

We have now been testing Ivory for just a few weeks by means of its TestFlight model and located that it supplied a performant and wealthy person Mastodon expertise that’s in some ways superior to the official app, making it simply one of many prime decisions for utilizing Mastodon on iOS units, even in its early days.