10 Free Apps to Instantly Elevate Your Twitter Experience

Block Party (free, paid plans from $12 per month) is the nuclear option for when trolling gets so bad you can’t function. It can automatically block every Twitter account that liked a particular tweet, and it has great AI-assisted tools for muting harassment. It also lets you give access to a trusted friend during a harassment campaign, meaning they can browse your mentions and do the blocking for you. Block Party can also limit mentions from new accounts, accounts without many followers, and accounts without a profile. Upgrade to a Premium account for more features, like being able to filter users by keywords in their bios. 

Twitter offers the ability to schedule tweets in advance but it's limited. You can create tweets and schedule them whenever you want, but you can't get a clear view of what's going out when. Professional social media management software, such as Buffer, lets you schedule several posts in advance in a way that makes it easy to see and control.

Most social media management apps are overkill for people with a Twitter account for personal use, but Buffer isn't. It has a free version that lets you manage up to three accounts. A calendar view lets you not only schedule tweets in advance but also see when they'll go out, and you can drag and drop tweets to reschedule them. I use the app to schedule tweets with links to my articles so that I'm not pushing out five such tweets at once. Buffer offers more than enough power for most people, and you can always upgrade if the free version isn't enough.

Harpy for Twitter (free; Pro version for $4.49) is a brand-new Twitter client for Android that's customizable and beautiful. It's so new that as of this writing it's technically in an open beta period, so anyone can use though it's not considered a finished product. I like it because it's much, much faster than the official Twitter client, and a media tab lets you browse only the images that are in your timeline. Even though it's still in beta, Harpy is a lot snappier and more stable than the official Twitter client. I can't recommend it enough.

A dedicated troll campaign can quickly make Twitter unusable (believe me). All it takes is one prominent person to make an accusation, warranted or not, and your mentions are full of people joining in on the "fun." It's not a superficial problem, and it's particularly nasty if you're part of a marginalized community. 

MegaBlock is a free tool that can help in such cases. It allows you to automatically block every single person who liked a particular tweet, which can be very useful when a toxic tweet is the source of a dogpiling. What MegaBlock does is extreme, clearly, but it's extremely effective in the case of a coordinated harassment campaign.

If you spend more time reading threads than writing them, the free Thread Reader is an app worth exploring. Thread Reader grabs any thread on Twitter and turns it into one complete text that's a lot easier to read. You copy the link to the first message in a thread and paste it into a field on Thread Reader's website; or you can reply to any tweet in a thread saying “@threadreaderapp unroll.” The result? The tweets are turned into an article. Thread Reader offers a Premium subscription for $3 per month or $30 per year that lets you archive threads to PDF, get real time alerts, and support the developers of this app.

Tweetbot (free to download; 99 cents per month or $5.99 per year) is a fantastic Twitter client for macOS, iPhone, and iPad. It's uncluttered, fast, and generally works the way a Twitter client should on an Apple device. Plus, there are advanced filtering features and the ability to view multiple columns at once.

Among the standout features on macOS are keyboard shortcuts, which make it possible to browse your timeline without ever touching your mouse or trackpad, but the main appeal for most users is going to be how much more streamlined everything feels.

All the apps mentioned in this list can't notify you when other people on Twitter retweet or like your posts, and certain features including polls aren't offered because of limits in Twitter's API. That may change as Twitter updates its API, but if not having notifications is a dealbreaker, you may want to think twice about using third-party Twitter apps. But there is another option.

TweetDeck (free) is a power user version of Twitter that's offered by Twitter itself and therefore doesn't have the same limitations as third-party apps. This web-only app supports multiple Twitter accounts and allows you to create a dashboard of columns where you can track timelines, notifications, and searches all at once.

And, if you want more customization, Tweeten (free, donations accepted) is a desktop client for Windows (through Windows 10, but not Windows 11), macOS, and Chrome that puts TweetDeck in a dedicated window. At first glance, it looks like nothing more than TweetDeck in a new window, but dig into the settings and you'll find customizations, including font size and column width, along with features like GIF search and desktop notifications that you can interact with without opening the app. It's the best desktop client for power users right now. 

Tweetz (free, donations accepted) is a minimal Twitter client for Windows that stays out of your way so you can focus on your timeline, which it puts in a dedicated window. There are no ads or other distractions—you can just scroll and read tweets. Images and videos load in a separate window, and you customize the display in all kinds of ways, choosing for example whether you want to see profile pictures, or changing the type point size. 

Typefully (free with paid accounts starting at $10 per month) makes composing a Twitter thread as easy as typing paragraphs into a word processor. Just hit enter two times to signify when a new tweet should start. There's support for adding images and links, and you can also preview how your thread will look on Twitter before publishing it. Paid accounts add tweet scheduling, analytics, support for video uploads, automatic retweeting, and other features.