Tapbots launches a new Mastodon client, Ivory, after Twitter kills its Tweetbot app • TechCrunch

Tapbots, the makers of popular third-party Twitter app Tweetbot that was recently killed by Twitter’s API changes, is releasing its next new product. Hoping to fill the void that

Tweetbot leaves behind, the company is now making its anticipated Mastodon client app Ivory available on the App Store as an Early Access release. The “Early Access” label is a

subtitle that Tapbots put on its release to indicate there will still be features missing as it debuts, the company told us. However, by launching publically on the App Store,

Tapbots is able to put Ivory into more people’s hands after filling up the limited number of TestFlight slots it had for its test version. Tapbots founder Paul Haddad told

TechCrunch that Ivory’s App Store release was approved just yesterday, but the company had a few technical issues to address around subscriptions before publicizing the launch.

For longtime Tweetbot users, Ivory will offer a familiar experience. But instead of serving as a client for Twitter’s network, the company has now embraced the promising open

source platform Mastodon. Though not quite as simple to use or understand as Twitter, Mastodon has gained traction in the months following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. As

Twitter’s new owner implemented controversial changes and the site’s performance degraded at times, some people had begun looking for a new home to post short updates, as they

did on Twitter. That led to a flurry of interest in new apps and other Twitter alternatives, like Mastodon. As of December, Mastodon had grown to 2.5 million monthly active users

across some 8,600 different servers or, in Mastodon lingo, “instances.” However, some Mastodon newcomers didn’t like the official native mobile app — especially after using

the faster, more polished Twitter native mobile app or those from third parties, like Tweetbot. That helped attract interest in the up-and-coming apps like Ivory and others being

built by former Twitter third-party app developers, including Mammoth. Tapbots says Ivory’s feature set takes advantage of the dozen+ years of experience Tapbots had in building

its award-winning Tweetbot client for Twitter’s platform. At launch, it sports dozens of features, ranging from support for baseline functionality to clever bells and whistles,

like being able to theme the app or change its icon. The app supports multiple accounts, and lets you view your local and federated timelines, trending posts, post statistics,

notifications and more. It also enables Mastodon-specific options that weren’t available on Twitter — like the ability to add content warnings to posts — as well as more