By Dan Moren

March 1, 2023 1:20 PM PT

Tweetbot and Twitterrific updated with option to opt-out of subscription refund

When Twitter shut down third-party clients in January, it not only left out in the cold the users of those apps, but the developers too. Many of those apps were significant sources of revenue for the teams behind them, and that income was cut off capriciously, without any warning.

One additional complication is that some clients had shifted to a subscription-based system in recent years, with users paying by the month or the year. Since those subscriptions were generally prepaid, users ended up in a situation where they essentially no longer had access to the app they’d paid for.

Now two of the most popular iOS clients, Twitterrific and Tweetbot, have been updated to offer options to their former customers. By default, if you take no action, you’ll get a pro-rated refund for the amount of time left in your subscription at the point when Twitter cut off access.

While that’s well within your rights as a consumer, it’s also kind of awkward, given that the money comes out of the pockets of those independent app developers like Tapbots and The Iconfactory, who got just as much of the short end of the stick as their users—if not more so. So for both apps there’s also an option to opt out of the refund. (Though you remain eligible if you change your mind.)

In the case of Tapbots, which has recently launched the Mastodon client Ivory, there’s also an option to transfer your existing Tweetbot subscription to Ivory on a non-recurring basis.

Unfortunately, chances are the developers will still end up refunding the majority of subscriptions, if for no other reasons than most customers will probably not even know these options exist, given that they have probably not opened their now defunct third-party Twitter client since they stopped working. But if you’re a former customer who feels like they got their money’s worth over the time you used one of these app, you can at least help lighten the load on those developers as they move on to their next projects.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Twitter at @dmoren or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. The latest novel in his Galactic Cold War series of sci-fi space adventures, The Nova Incident, is available now.]

By Dan Moren

February 18, 2023 11:47 AM PT

Setting up iOS’s two-factor authentication for Twitter

If you’re already using two-factor authentication on your Twitter, account, great! But with the company’s announcement Friday evening¹ that it would be discontinuing two-factor authentication via SMS for all but its paying Twitter Blue subscribers, you may suddenly find yourself wondering what a person’s to do if they want to keep their Twitter account secure?

Have no fear: while these changes were perhaps hastily and questionably enacted, there is a silver lining here. Two-factor authentication via an authentication app is more secure than using SMS, and, better yet, if you’re using a recent version of iOS, iPadOS, or macOS, then not only is the ability to set up that feature baked right into the operating system, but the system will even autofill the password for you every time you login.

Here’s how to set it up:

First, fire up Twitter, either on the web or in the app. In the toolbar on the left, tap the More button (the one with the three dots), and then tap Settings and Support; under the menu that appears there, tap Settings and Privacy.

This will take you to the account section of your Twitter Settings; tap the entry for “Security and account access” and then, on the right hand side of the screen, tap Security.

You’ll see an entry for “Two-factor authentication”: tap that and you’ll get options for the various ways to secure your account. Tap the checkbox for “Authentication app” and a dialog will appear prompting you to get started.

Fun so far, right?

Here’s where it gets a little tricky, depending on what device you’re using. To set up the two-factor codes, you’ll get a QR code. While in some apps and websites, macOS/iOS can actually detect the QR code being show onscreen, allowing you to tap and hold on it to set up the feature, that didn’t happen for me on Twitter on the iPad. That leaves two other options for configuring this feature.

If you happen to have an iOS device handy, you can point its camera at the QR code on your screen. In the Camera app, as you hover over the QR code, you should see a yellow bubble pop up that says Add Verification Code to Twitter.com. Tapping that will open the Passwords section of iOS, and prompt you to add the verification code to an existing account. Search for your Twitter login, tap it, and you should be prompted to save the verification code there.

If you don’t have an iOS device handy, you can do the process manually. Tap the “Can’t scan the QR code?” in the dialog box, and you’ll instead be prompted with a long string of characters. Copy this and go to the Passwords section of System Settings, where you’ll need to authenticate with your passcode or biometrics. Then search for your Twitter login, tap on it, and select the Set Up Verification Code button. You’ll be prompted to either scan the QR code or Enter Setup Key—choose the latter, paste in the string you just copied, and hit OK.

You should now see a new section showing a six-digit code along with a timer counting down. Copy that code and return to the Twitter website to paste it in. (The OS should also offer to autofill it for you when you tap on the verification code feature.)

That’s it! The hardest part is over and now whenever you log in to Twitter in the future, the OS should autofill the two-factor code just like it does for your username and password.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Twitter at @dmoren or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. The latest novel in his Galactic Cold War series of sci-fi space adventures, The Nova Incident, is available now.]