In Depth: 6 of the best Mac Twitter clients

A big advantage of Twitter is that while you can use the website, there are also dozens of Twitter clients that provide a streamlined way to use the service. Here we've rounded up six of the most popular.

While we conclude which of them is, in our opinion, the best available, if you disagree, all you need to do to switch clients is launch a different application and add your login details.

Twitter clients

Echofon - Free with ads/$20
Kiwi - Free (two accounts)/$10
Nambu - Free
TweetDeck - Free
Tweetie - Free
Twitterrific - Free with ads/$15

Test one - General use

Is the app usable and are important features available?

TweetDeck's Adobe AIR cross-platform origins result in a non-Mac-like and fiddly but powerful client, which enables you to define columns of varying content types.

Conversely, Twitterrific is Mac-like but basic – it resembles a palette and only enables access to one account at a time, and so it's best suited to sporadic use.

Nambu looks good in screen grabs, but we found its icon-heavy interface overwhelming and a little buggy. The other apps are broadly similar and usable. Switching between accounts is simple, and shortcuts enable fast access to important commands.

Visually, Kiwi edges it due to theme support, but Echofon's minimalism and myriad keyboard shortcuts are welcome, even if its occasional lack of refresh on account switching and single post-window aren't; by contrast, Kiwi and Tweetie offer independent windows for posting.

Elsewhere, Kiwi gains points for rule definition capabilities and displaying images inline.

Test results

Test two - Posting tweets

How easy is it to post tweets and attachments?

Our requirements: posting to any signed-in account; a live character count; dragging images from Finder for upload; optional shortening of links. Twitterrific mostly failed, offering no assistance regarding images and links.

Nambu also fell short – images can be added but not dragged from Finder. Kiwi disappointed a little. Link shrinking is slow, and we found Kiwi sometimes posted to an account other than that selected in its post window.

Echofon impressed though. Images are shown as thumbs, which can be previewed via Quick Look, and you can post screen grabs or iTunes songs.

Tweetie's post window is similar, and can be accessed via a system-wide hotkey. But TweetDeck is posting champion: you can post to multiple accounts at once, and the app has geo-location support and tweet scheduling. It's complex, though.

Also, TweetDeck and Echofon don't have separate post windows, so no working on multiple tweets.

Test results

Test three - Having chats

How about threaded conversations and direct messages?

People use Twitter for quick-fire conversation, both in public and in private via direct messages (which can be sent to anyone following you).

Twitterrific does neither (unlike the iOS version), but the other apps all enable you to view public conversation threads.

In TweetDeck you can display them in a separate column; Nambu expands them beneath a tweet, Echofon shows them in its drawer (in a rather fetching iChat-style) when you click on a conversation icon, and both Tweetie and Kiwi show a conversation when you double-click on a relevant message.

On balance, Echofon's approach is simplest and clearest, even if chats look nicest in Kiwi. Surprisingly, all but one client lists your direct messages linearly in reverse-chronological order.

Tweetie is the odd one out, enabling you to access them by contact, which is much clearer, although Nambu at least enables you to view sent and received direct messages separately.

Test results

Test four - Doing searches

Is searching tweets simple and can searches be saved?

All the apps on test, excepting Twitterrific and TweetDeck, enable you to use a search field to find related tweets, which are then displayed in the main timeline window. Terms you want to track can also be saved, although methods vary.

With TweetDeck, this is the only means of making a search, and each becomes a separate column – great for tracking, but annoying for one-off searches. The other apps all enable you to flag any search made as a favourite that you can return to later; and, aside from in Echofon, new results are highlighted when your feed is refreshed.

There are differences in search setups, though, and we found Nambu's icons awkward, but Tweetie's interface was very clear. Kiwi takes a different approach, enabling you to add searches as separately defined 'accounts'. This provides you with more scope for complex searches, at the expense of cluttering the account-switching menu if you've many searches stored.

Test results

The winner / Echofon

None of the apps here is poor, but three quickly fall out of favour. Twitterrific is too basic and fiddly, and TweetDeck and Nambu are too complex for their own good (although TweetDeck's worth considering if you need to track, manage and post to a large number of accounts simultaneously).

Of the others, we like Tweetie a lot – its message threading is great – but it lacks support for some recent Twitter features. Its developer now works for Twitter, and a revamped version is likely imminent.

Today, though, the title fight is between Echofon and Kiwi. Despite its small post area and occasional refresh issues on switching accounts, Echofon edges it, but if the minimal interface isn't for you, Kiwi and Tweetie are worthy alternatives.

Final results