5 Basic Twhirl Settings You Should Change For Better Tweeting

Twhirl is one of the many twitter clients. Unlike many other clients, twhirl is easy to use.

I assume you are on twitter (after all who is not in twitter these days?). Though many people prefer tweeting through the web, using a twitter client will increase your productivity.

Though there are many twitter clients, I have always preferred to use Tweetdeck. But for the last few days tweetdeck was not working for me and I had to switch to twhirl.

Twhirl is simple and makes tweeting fun. But if you are new to twhirl or thinking of giving twhirl a try, these are 5 basic settings that you should change in twhirl for better tweeting.

1. API limit

Go to settings and you will see an option called network. In this you can set the API limit. You cannot set twhirl (or any application for that matter) to update once every few seconds. If you do, you will reach the API limits and you won’t be able to tweet using the client for sometime. The API normally resets every one hour.

In this API, set how many requests you need per hour. I have set it to 30 requests per hour as you can see in the image. Once you do this, twhirl will automatically adjust the options that are following based on the requests you have set per hour.

I have disabled it for direct messages because I get DM notifications to my mail. I want to reply quickly to people who @ me and that is the reason why I have set my replies to update faster than tweets.

You can do this based on your requirements but don’t forget to set this.

2. Retweet Format

You can see the retweet format under ‘general’ in settings. The retweet format is by default like the below image.

You need to replace ‘retweeting’ with ‘RT’.

The reason why you should do this is because when you retweet by saying ”retweeting”, more characters are utilized. So change it to RT.

3. Notification with Sound

In twhirl, you have the option of getting notified of new tweets with sound. When you select this, you will be notified for all the tweets. But I feel that I get more distracted when I set this. At the same time, when I’m in some other room, I don’t want to miss my replies.

So what I do is I set sound for only the replies. Check the box which says ‘only play sound on replies/directs’.

4. Do Not Hide When Minimized

Twhirl gives you the option of automatically hiding the client when you minimize. I normally do not prefer this. I don’t want twhirl to hide whenever I minimize. I don’t have the habit of having too many applications running at the same time. So having twhirl running without hiding will not be a problem for me.

Go to settings and select general tab. Here you have to uncheck the box that says ‘hide when minimized’.

5. Lookup Profiles in Browser

Most of the twitter clients have this function where if you click on a user’s profile, it will be loaded in the client itself. I hate this since I cannot get a proper view of the user profile in the client. It shows in a small column. Even if it did show in a big space, I would never prefer to see the profiles in the client.

Go to the general tab under settings and click on the drop down list box which says ‘By default, lookup profiles’. Select ‘in browser’.

After you do all this, don’t forget to save. If you don’t save, the changes won’t have any effect.

Try twhirl for a change and see how it works for you. Let me know in the comments what other settings need to be changed in twhirl when someone has just installed twhirl or started using twhirl.

You can follow me on twitter here.