Cawbird: A Twitter Desktop Client For Ubuntu

Cawbird is a Linux based Twitter client for desktop. It is based on Corebird which has now been depreciated.

Installing Cawbird:

It is available as a snap when installing in Ubuntu. To install it, open the Terminal in Ubuntu and type in:

sudo snap install cawbird

installing Cawbird in Ubuntu

Alternatively, you can also search and install it from Ubuntu Software.

installing Cawbird from Ubuntu Software

Once installed, open it. On the first launch, you’d need to authorize Cawbird to have access to the Twitter account to be used with it. So, click on Request PIN.

Cawbird sign-in window

This will open a browser window that will require a Twitter sign-in if not done before. Enter the credentials and click on the Authorize app.

linking twitter account to Cawbird

A PIN will be generated.

generating twitter pin for Cawbird

Copy-paste it in the Cawbird sign-in window and click on Confirm.

authorizing Cawbird using twitter pin

Using Cawbird:

Cawbird is now available to use. The main window is the Twitter timeline wherein you can see various tweets and reply or favorite them. Clicking on the home icon will show the tweets from your account.

The interface is simple with the top pane consisting of various options like viewing mentions, direct messages, lists, and searching Twitter.

Cawbird interface

To reply to tweets, like or retweet, choose the specific tweet and use the options below that.

interacting with tweets in Cawbird

Tweets:

To compose a tweet, click on the edit icon from the top.

Adding a tweet using Cawbird

This will open a tweet composer window. You can add images to the tweet and also emoticons.

composing a tweet using Cawbird

For emoticons, click on the penguin button to bring up a list of available emoticons.

adding emoticons to tweets using Cawbird

Configuring Cawbird settings:

Various settings for Cawbird can be changed from the top-right of the window by clicking on the gear icon. Click and select Settings.

accessing Cawbird settings

There are four sections for configuring Cawbird.

Interface: Enable the dark theme from here by selecting Use dark theme.

interface settings for Cawbird

The Cawbird interface will now be dark.

dark theme for Cawbird

You can also toggle on/off auto-scrolling of new tweets and auto-displaying media content within tweets from here.

Notifications: By default, notifications about new tweets and messages are enabled. They can be turned off though if needed.

configuring notification settings for Cawbird

Tweets: Settings related to how the tweets are displayed can be changed from here. By default, media links and sensitive content is turned off.

configuring tweet display settings for Cawbird

Snippets: You can insert some cool text art/snippets from here. To do that, type the keyword for it and press Tab.

adding and using snippets in Cawbird

Also, new snippets can be added by clicking on the + sign. Associate the new snippet with a keyword and use that keyword to insert the snippet in tweets.

There are also keyboard shortcuts for using Cawbird. They can be viewed by clicking on Shortcuts from the gear icon at the top-right.

a list of Cawbird keyboard shortcuts

Note:

There are certain limitations when using Cawbird like it getting refreshed every two minutes, no display of notifications about follow/unfollow and so on unless you restart it. This is because of the Twitter API restrictions and not because of Cawbird itself.

This is a lightweight and easy to use Twitter desktop client.

Do try it out.

 

  1. Imran Sayyad says:

    Hope will not be blacklisted by twitter in future… it happened with some apps previously