Documentation꞉ 1. User interface

TweetDuck is a highly customizable desktop client for TweetDeck, based on the discontinued official client. After installing and launching TweetDuck for the first time, you will be asked to login with your Twitter account.

The main window which displays the TweetDeck website is referred to as the browser window in the documentation.

TweetDeck

TweetDuck adds a large amount of improvements to the TweetDeck website itself to give you a much better experience compared to the original client or using a regular browser.

Major Features

Many new features are added by official plugins:

• Settings -> Edit layout & design opens a dialog where you can customize the website
  • Choose between a Dark / Light theme
  • Pick one of 4 avatar shapes
  • Fully customize column width, font size, and many other options
• New Tweet drawer has been improved:
  • Heart icon opens an emoji keyboard
  • Manage templates button lets you create both static and dynamic tweet templates
• See a detailed list of official plugins

Tips

• The t.co link shortener is bypassed when clicking or copying links
• Press Ctrl+V when writing a tweet, reply, or DM to paste an image from the clipboard
• If your mouse supports extra buttons, you can use them for easier navigation:
  • Press forward to open the hovered tweet (unlike a regular click, this will not trigger links)
  • Press back to close modal dialogs or return back to timeline (press back when hovering an opened column to return to timeline, or elsewhere to return all columns to timeline)
• You can also middle-click icons under tweets for quick actions:
  • Middle-click the reply icon to open the reply in the left panel (shortcut to Popout)
  • Middle-click the retweet icon to quote the tweet
  • Middle-click the like icon to select which accounts you want to like the tweet from
• If you want to restore a cleared column, hold Shift with column preferences open to turn the Clear button into a Restore button
• Dragging a tweet link from another program onto a column in TweetDuck opens that tweet in detail view
• Fixed many visual and functional issues TweetDeck keeps having

Notes

• Since TweetDuck is based on a browser engine, you can use many browser keyboard shortcuts, including:
  • Hold Ctrl or use the middle mouse button to open special links in your main browser
  • Hold Alt to select text from links or other interactive elements without triggering them
  • When copying text from a browser, it is common that pasting it into a rich text editor retains all text formatting; for convenience, TweetDuck will only retain links and strip all other formatting
• When selecting text inside an input box, you can Apply ROT13 which is often used to encrypt spoilers on social media
• TweetDuck protects your privacy by disabling TweetDeck's metrics system and Google Analytics on all visited websites

Options

Right-click anywhere and select Options to configure TweetDuck. The following options are available in the General tab, the other tabs are covered in other parts of the documentation.

• Expand Links When Hovered
  • When hovering over a shortened link, it will be expanded to reveal the full URL
  • If disabled, a tooltip is displayed instead
• Shift Selects Multiple Accounts
  • When selecting accounts in New Tweet or when retweeting, click an account to select only that account, or hold Shift and click to select multiple accounts
  • If disabled, this behavior is reversed to how TweetDeck works by default, i.e. click to select multiple accounts, hold Shift and click to select one account
• Add Search Columns Before First Column
  • When performing a search, a new Search column is usually added after your last column
  • This option places newly spawned Search columns before the first column instead, which eliminates sudden scrolling and lets you immediately see the search results
• Keep Like/Follow Dialogs Open
  • Allows liking/following from multiple accounts at once, instead of closing the dialog after taking an action
• Best Image Quality
  • Image context menu options (open, copy, save, save all) will always use links to highest quality images (:orig in the image URL)
• Enable Animated Avatars
  • Toggles animated avatars
  • The option toggles all GIF animations, but actual GIFs are only found in some very old avatars
• Zoom
  • Changes the zoom level in the browser window to a value between 50% and 200%
  • Note that this option also affects the size of desktop notifications and tweet screenshots
• Updates
  • See the Updates section

Locales

By default, TweetDuck will use English for its spell check dictionary and tweet translations, even if your system is set to a different locale. You can customize this and other related options in the Locales tab.

• Enable Spell Check
  • Toggles spell check when writing tweets
• Spell Check Language
  • Sets the dictionary language, which is downloaded from Chrome's spell check repository
• Bing Translator Target Language
  • Sets the language tweets are translated into

Managing Options

Click Manage Options to open a dialog where you can:

• Import Profile from a file
• Export Profile into a file
• Restore Defaults to reset your configuration

All of these options let you choose what you want to import/export/reset - you can pick any combination of Program Options, Login Session, and Plugin Data.

System Tray

TweetDuck allows you to display an icon in the system tray with some basic controls. You can pick between:

• Disabled
  • No icon
• Display Icon Only
  • Always displays the tray icon
• Minimize to Tray
  • Always displays the tray icon, and also moves TweetDuck to tray when the browser window is minimized
• Close to Tray
  • Always displays the tray icon, and also moves TweetDuck to tray when the browser window is closed
  • Since closing the window no longer exits the app, right-click the tray icon and select Close to exit it completely
• Combined
  • Combines the Minimize to Tray and Close to Tray options

When the icon is visible, you can also tick Enable Highlight which changes the icon whenever new tweets come in while the browser window is in the background. Note that this will only work for columns that have at least one notification type enabled (TODO: fix).

Right-click the tray icon for the following options:

• Restore
  • Opens the browser window again
  • You can also start TweetDuck again to restore it from tray, for example using an icon on your desktop
• Mute notifications
  • See Notifications
• Close
  • Exits TweetDuck

Updates

It's highly recommended to update TweetDuck whenever a new version is available, especially since older versions may stop working as TweetDeck keeps changing.

When Check Updates Automatically is enabled, TweetDuck will notify you about updates within an hour of the release. You can also check for updates manually using the Check Updates Now button, if for example you see an announcement from the official Twitter account.

The update notification appears in the bottom left corner with the following options:

• Update now
  • Performs the update
• Remind me later
  • Hides the update until TweetDuck is reloaded
• Ignore this update
  • Stops notifying you until a newer update comes out or a manual check is performed

You may also click View update information which displays the same list of changes you can see on the releases page for that particular update.

Updates are typically lightweight and only take a couple seconds, but major updates may trigger a download of the full installer which will take longer depending on your internet connection speed.

Videos

Twitter videos and GIFs are marked with a purple play icon to indicate that they will use a custom video player. Click the thumbnail to play it, click while holding Ctrl to open the video in your browser instead, or right-click the thumbnail for additional options.

• Move your mouse over the video to display the control panel which contains:
  • Close, Download, and Fullscreen buttons
  • Seek bar
  • Volume slider
• In addition to the buttons, you can also use the following shortcuts:
  • Click the video or press Space to pause/unpause
  • Double-click the video to toggle fullscreen, press Escape to exit fullscreen
  • Click outside the player, use the back mouse button, or press Escape when not in fullscreen to close the video

The custom video player requires Windows Media Player to be installed on your system. Support varies based on your system - some videos may display an unknown format error on older versions of Windows.

Context Menu

Right-click inside the browser window to open the context menu. Available items depend on the type of the right-clicked element.

Tweets

Right-click anywhere inside a tweet for the following items:

• Open tweet in browser
• Copy tweet address
• Screenshot tweet to clipboard

If the tweet contains a quote, you can also:

• Open quoted tweet in browser
• Copy quoted tweet address

User Accounts

Right-click a user account (avatar or a username link) for the following items:

• Open account in browser
• Copy account address
• Copy account username

Media

Right-click an image for the following items:

• View image in photo viewer
• Open image in browser
• Copy image address
• Save image as...

When right-clicking an image inside a tweet that contains multiple images, you will also be given an option to save all of them:

• Save all images as...

When right-clicking a video thumbnail marked with a purple play button, you will be able to:

• Open video in browser
• Copy video address
• Save video as...

Other

Right-clicking anywhere will always display these items:

• Reload browser
  • Reloads the TweetDeck website
• Mute notifications
  • See Notifications
• Options
  • See Options
• Plugins
  • See Plugins
• About TweetDuck
  • Displays information about TweetDuck with links to the official website, wiki, and issues