After Twitter decided ban all third party appsOne developer who got this decision took what they learned from their own Twitter app and created a client specifically for mastodons above Iphone and iPad called Nga.
Developed by Tapbots, includes Paul Haddad (opens in a new tab) and Mark Jadine (opens in a new tab)Ivory looks reminiscent of Tweetbot, its previous third-party app for Twitter, but looks and feels much more polished than other attempts at Mastodon apps we’ve seen in recent months. .
that is available for $1.99 / £1.99 / AU$2.39 (opens in a new tab) as a monthly subscription or $19.99 / £14.99 / AU$21.99 for a year but you can sign up for a 7-day trial to see what you think.
Apps like Mammoth and Mastodon’s own app are fine, but Tapbots has its own style, applied across all of its apps, such as Calcbot and Pastebot, and it’s for this reason that Ivory has become Fort my default Mastodon app (opens in a new tab) for what can be foreseen.
Tweetbot dies so Ivory can live
If you used Tweetbot before, Ivory will feel very familiar to you; but even if you haven’t, it’s laid out like a Twitter app, so someone coming to Mastodon as a new user will feel at home. You get a bar for your notifications, mentions, search, and profile, but you can customize three of these if you want easier access to your favorite filters, toots, etc.
There are other ways to make Ivory your own, such as by changing the theme and color style, in addition to various icons, including one that honors Tweetbot. You can make the app your own with all these options, which will appeal to those switching from Twitter to Mastodon.
There are also a lot of item which you can place on your iPhone and iPad home screen so you can show your latest followers, pictures from your timeline, stats, etc. Every one of these widgets is good implementations, and they make a strong case that they’ll be on macOS soon.
There’s also a clever ‘Open in Ivory’ extension in The hunt because when someone sends you a link to Mastodon via iMessage or WhatsApp for example, so Ivory will be able to open toot in Mastodon, saving you trouble.
As for the version 1.0 release, there’s a lot to enjoy here if you’re using Mastodon, but that’s no surprise. Tapbots took what it learned from Tweetbot and brought it into Ivory, and it showed. It feels like Ivory has set a standard for other third-party apps to work towards and shows the way forward for developers – that is, by focusing on their own style, instead of try to adapt Mastodon as they grow.
This is an impressive release already on my iPhone and iPad – and I’d love to see the next version of macOS.
