A lot of big name apps are just starting to roll out updates to support some of the new features found in Android 7.0 and up (Nougat), such as app shortcuts and quick actions from notifications. The most recent of such apps is the official Twitter app. Two new Nougat features, app shortcuts and multi-window, had been integrated into Twitter on the app’s alpha channel for some time, and as of today’s update, are now available on the normal version of the app that most people end up downloading through the Google Play Store. For obvious reasons, the new app features require a device running Nougat, and with a launcher that supports App Shortcuts.
App shortcuts, for starters, are quick actions available by long-pressing an icon on your home screen. Google has integrated Quick Actions into a number of their own apps, and opened it up for developers; this means that a wide range of actions can be available, depending on the app. For Twitter, those actions are creating a new Tweet, writing up a new message, and submitting a search query to the service. To get these, simply place Twitter on your home screen and long-press on the icon. The menu that pops up will have the new options listed.
The other new feature is a small, but welcomed change. Up until now, getting Twitter to work with any implementation of a multi-window feature, whether on a custom ROM or a manufacturer skin, was a matter of luck, and often quite buggy. With this update, Twitter plays nicely with the feature, and is specifically built to work well with the official implementation of the feature present in Nougat. With that said, versions of the feature have been present in some phones’ official software and custom ROMs as far back as Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) if not further, so if you happen to own an older device that has multi-window enabled, but does not run Nougat, be advised that you may run into some serious bugs, if not outright broken support. The update brings the software up to version 2.66, and is rolling out worldwide right now.