How to Add Classic RTs to the Mac Twitter App

I don’t like the way the official Twitter app for the Mac currently handles retweets. You’re given two options, to use Twitter’s baked-in retweet feature, or to quote a tweet.

If you choose the quote option, the app does just that, it generates a new tweet that simply wraps the tweet you want to reference in quotes like so:

This, however, is far from ideal for all sorts of reasons having to do with everything from conventions to readability to aesthetics. Classic style retweets are the way to go.

Thankfully, there is a way to get classic style retweets in the Mac Twitter app.

1. Quit the Twitter app and open up the Terminal.
2. Copy and paste the following line into the Terminal and hit return.
   defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac DebugMode -bool true
3. Re-open the Twitter app and open up Preferences. You should see a new preference pane called “Secret.”
   
4. Enter “RT @{USERNAME}: {TEXT}” in the Quote Syntax field.
5. To make this stick, click back on “General” and then back on “Secret” before closing Preferences.
6. Now, when you choose “Quote Tweet…” the app should generate a classic style retweet.