Last year, Twitter announced that it would be gradually refreshing its image as well as redesigning its various applications. Now, according to a new press release, Twitter has once again redesigned it applications across mobile, desktop, and web platforms, likely in an effort to better serve newcomers and generally improve the social media giant’s aesthetic.
While the redesign certainly isn’t a radical departure from its former look as well as user experience, the visual update does include a few small changes to things such as font used, icon shape, and the location of the settings menu, among other things.
The newest Twitter redesign now includes a new side-navigation menu and less tabs at the bottom of the application – profile, additional accounts, settings, and privacy are now grouped together in the same place. While this change rolled out to Android users last year, due to positive response it’s now coming around to iOS.
The Twitter update now allows users to open web links in Safari’s View Controller within the application itself, allowing for easy access to various accounts on websites that one might already be signed into. This also means that if you user a Safari ad-blocker, it will actually work within the Twitter app.
Additionally, Twitter has “refined” its look, as profile icons across the application are now round instead of square, making it “clearer to see what’s being said and who’s saying it.” On top of that, the application has changed its typography, making it overall more consistent, as headlines such as “Tending Now” or “In Case You Missed It” are now bolder, helping users better separate them from the rest of their content.
One of the application’s most noticeable change is the complete change of its Reply icon. Until now, the icon was a fairly recognizable symbol – an arrow. Now, either to appeal to newer users or to follow in the footsteps of Facebook, Twitter has switched it to a speech bubble, “a symbol most know and love.”
Finally, the newest change in the update shoes live tweet counts such as reply, Retweet, and like counts so users can see the conversations as they are happening live.
Twitter says all the changes will roll out today to Twitter for iOS and Twitter for Android through an app update to version 7.0.
