(Guide/Review) GoodTwitter 2 is a userscript that restores Twitter's legacy interface

[Karlston]

GoodTwitter 2 is a userscript that restores Twitter's legacy interface

Remember GoodTwitter? It was a very useful add-on that helped users stick to the legacy interface of Twitter.

 

 

It did so by spoofing the browser's user-agent to an older version, which tricked the social network to load the old UI.

 

Last month, Twitter began displaying a banner that the legacy version was being discontinued with effect from June 1st, 2020. And that's exactly what happened. Zusor, the developer of GoodTwitter announced that due to Twitter's decision to stop the old interface, there was no choice but to abandon the extension. This meant all users on desktop browsers were stuck with the new and horrible mobile-centric design.

 

Since I rely on Twitter for news, alerts, communication with friends, fellow writers, companies, etc, I couldn't just stop using the service. I couldn't tolerate the new interface either. The same goes with reddit's new interface, but at least we can by-pass that by substituting old in place of www in the URL. The new Twitter interface not only looked different, but also had some scrolling issues, and when clicking on Tweets it took me to a new page. This drove me to hunt for a different solution, maybe a different add-on to restore Twitter's old UI. But I will admit that I wasn't very hopeful.

 

A few days ago, I came across a possible fix in GoodTwitter 2 (by Electric Boogaloo). Though its name is very similar to the extension it replaced, it is in fact a userscript. So, you will need to use a userscript manager extension like ViolentMonkey to use it.

 

Warning: Just a heads-up about TamperMonkey. It is no longer open-source (since version 2.9) according to this article.

 

For some reason, GoodTwitter 2 isn't compatible with GreaseMonkey, which is the one I use. I tried installing the script with it, but that didn't work. So I decided to follow the developer's recommendation to use ViolentMonkey. I have both add-ons installed, and they co-exist without any issues.

How to restore Twitter's legacy interface with GoodTwitter 2

1. Install ViolentMonkey (or any script manager extension of your choice) for Firefox or Chrome.

 

2. Visit the official GitHub page to find the link for the user-script. Here's a direct link for it:

https://github.com/Bl4Cc4t/GoodTwitter2/raw/master/twitter.gt2eb.user.js

3. Opening the link should open a new tab in your browser, that asks you if you want to install the script. Allow it by clicking on the "confirm installation" button in the top right corner.

 

 

4. Close the tab and visit Twitter.com

 

5. Hit F5 (or Ctrl-F5) to force the page to refresh.

 

 

That's it. Twitter's legacy interface should be back for you. This isn't a 1:1 replacement of the old interface, but it does look very similar.  The What's happening section is switched to the left replacing the side bar, the navigation bar (Home, notifications, messages), search button, Tweet button, are at the top, and the Who to Follow section is on the top right.

 

The script places an element on the left side bar that displays a link for its change-log, just hit the X button to close it. It does keep reappearing when you hit refresh.

 

Note: You must disable the original GoodTwitter extension for the new one to work. But considering that the old one doesn't work, there's no point in keeping it installed.

 

GoodTwitter 2 is an open source project. I tested it on Firefox and Microsoft Edge Chromium and it works nicely.

 

 

GoodTwitter 2 is a userscript that restores Twitter's legacy interface

 

[Dino8]

Nitter is also a nice non-javascript front-end replacemant for twitter, similar to 

invidio.us . On its homepage you can findsome browers addons

which redirects your links to nitter, invidio.us or bibliogram (for instagram).

 

https://github.com/zedeus/nitter

or https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/374833-yt2invidio