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Twitter Progressive Web App (PWA) on Windows 10 Brings Extended Character Limit, Explore Section, and More

Twitter Progressive Web App (PWA) on Windows 10 Brings Extended Character Limit, Explore Section, and More

By Ankit Chawla | Updated: 2 May 2018 17:27 IST

Highlights

Support for older versions will end on June 1
PWAs are Web apps acting as native apps
Microsoft Store added support for PWAs in February this year

Social media giant Twitter on Tuesday announced the launch of its new Progressive Web App (PWA) on the Microsoft Store for mobile and desktop platforms. This update to Twitter for Windows brings a ton of recent features such as extended character limit, Explore section, and the ability to bookmark tweets. The app has been optimised for the latest Windows 10 April 2018 Update. Additionally, the older versions (including UWP) of the Twitter app on Windows will no longer be accessible with effect from June 1.

The update brings to the foray long overdue features including an extension to the new 280 character limit (finally), access to the Explore tab to help find relevant topics, ability to bookmark tweets for later reading, improved accessibility for screen readers, and more. A common code also suggests that newer features will come to the Twitter for Windows app faster than before. The Twitter app on Windows 10 was last updated early last year, in February 2017, with the addition of Tabs, ability to view number of replies, viewable pinned tweets, and rich content in Direct Messages.

Back in February this year, Microsoft had announced that it would be bringing Progressive Web Apps to Windows 10 and Microsoft Store. The company also announced support for PWAs on Microsoft Edge browser. Essentially, PWAs aren't native apps but instead Web apps acting as native apps. This makes it possible to get certain native app functions like notifications without having to install heavy app packages. Other companies such as Flipkart, MagicBricks, Housing.com, and Goibibo already have PWA versions of their apps available for download.

"This release represents a renewed commitment to Windows that has been long overdue and is part of a longer-term strategy to reach greater feature parity to all of our platforms. We wanted to make sure the app represented a modern Twitter experience, while taking advantage of unique Windows features, like support for Windows native APIs such as share integration, pinned tiles, jump links, and more. We want to continue providing our Microsoft users with the latest and greatest, and will be adding additional features like night mode, in the coming weeks and months," said Charlie Croom, Web Engineer at Twitter in the blog post.

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