Twitter can quickly turn into an endless stream of tweets that, without the proper filters and tools, is quite overwhelming. Nighthawk for iOS is a new Twitter client for iPhone and iPad with the goal of making the social network easier to manage with powerful filters, a Close Friends timeline, and more.
The developers behind Nighthawk spoke to hundreds of people who use Twitter with varying use cases. The consensus among those users was that social media, especially Twitter, “can be a lot to manage.” To combat that sense of overwhelming, Nighthawk employs a few unique features.
Other Twitter apps allow you to mute certain words and phrases. Nighthawk takes things a step further with its Smart Filters feature. The app includes a collection of human-curated filters, ranging from filters for “US Politics” and TV shows to muting all support accounts completely. This is a great way to get inspiration for which tweets you can hide to improve your Twitter experience.
Nighthawk also allows you to create a “Close Friends” feed. Here, you can create a timeline that includes tweets only from your selected friends. The accounts you choose for your “Close Friends” feed will be completely hidden, which should significantly reduce the clutter in your Twitter timeline.
Nighthawk isn’t trying to compete with or replace apps like Tweetbot and Twitterrific, developers Nathan Lawrence and Sam Gold say. They believe that Nighthawk can coexist with those apps as an alternative Twitter experience, when necessary. The goal is to give users the ability to get a more granular Twitter experience, not the “opaque agenda of a black-box algorithm” experience provided by the official Twitter for iOS app.
By default, Nighthawk displays tweets chronologically, like you would find in most other Twitter apps. Once you tap into features like Smart Filters and Close Friends, however, you can create a personalized Twitter experience. Other features of Nighthawk include an ad-free experience, custom icons, and more. It is available on the App Store as a $3.99 download.
