Twitter just rebranded the algorithmic timeline on iOS, but now that change is available on desktop browsers as well. The star icon, sadly, is gone.
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Twitter’s new For You tab, which rolled out to iPhones and iPads on Tuesday, is now appearing on desktop web browsers.
The For You tab is the TikTok-inspired name for Twitter’s algorithmically curated “Home” tab, and on iOS, it’s now the default tab you see when you close and reopen the app. You can still access the reverse-chronological list of the latest posts from the people you follow on the “Following” tab (previously “Latest”), though Twitter has removed the star icon to switch between the timelines.
For some, this change is now even more annoying since major third-party Twitter apps just stopped working, blocking people’s escape from features or changes they don’t like. As of Friday afternoon, developers of those apps are still saying that they haven’t heard anything from Twitter about what’s going on and whether their apps were broken intentionally or by accident.
In a tweet announcing the change, the company says it’s coming to Android “soon.”
The web version doesn’t seem to push the algorithmic For You timeline as hard as the mobile switch. In my tests, it would stay on following even after I closed the tab or browser. One of my colleagues says that when he got the change, it was automatically set to Following — though for me, logging into Twitter with a private browser window does appear to reset it to For You.
The app, meanwhile, automatically opens to the algorithmic timeline and will reset to it if you close and reopen it.
wazup.