The Twitter CLI nobody asked for

• Features
• Comparison with twurl
• Quick start
• API
  • init
  • post
    • Posting a thread
    • Posting a multi-line tweet
    • Using an alt profile
  • delete
  • like
  • unlike
  • home
  • me
  • feed
  • version
  • help
  • Global arguments
• Building from source
• Releasing
• Troubleshooting
  • I am getting authentication errors
• Acknowledgements
• Footnotes

Features

• 🚀 Fastest Twitter client on the market¹
• 🤑 Absolutely free to use for live tweeting, doom scrolling, and more!
• Written in a programming language nobody cares about
• 😈 Supports multiple profiles so you can use your alts to troll with ease!
• 🤓 Allows you to dick around at work while looking like you're doing some hard-code nerd work in the terminal!
• 🥳 It kind of sucks to use Twitter via CLI so it will make you reduce your Twitter time -- less social, happier you!
• 🧠 Name is a portmanteau of "wittier" and "Twitter"

Comparison with twurl

twurl is a Twitter CLI developed and released by Twitter

	twurl	Twittier
Is Next-Gen	❌	✅
Blazing fast1	❌	✅
Shorter command name to save you valuable keystrokes	❌	✅
NFTs2	❌	✅
Organic & Fair Trade	❌	✅
Massive sex appeal	❌	✅
Language name matches regex ru[a-z]{2}	✅	✅
Officially supported	✅	❌
Supports a fuller range of the Twitter API	✅	❌

Quick start

1. Download executable from the releases page
2. Initialize your credentials file: tw init
   • If you are on Mac, your computer will try to keep you safe by saying the program is malwaare. After it prompts you to move it to the trash, click "cancel" and immediately open System Preferences > Security & Privacy. Click the button that says "Allow" next to the program name to allow your computer to run it.
3. Create a developer account. Then create an app. Then grant it write permissions. Then generate an access token and secret. (This is a better guide than I would write)
4. Copy/paste your API key, API secret, Access token, and Access token secret into your ~/.twitter_credentials.toml file
5. See what's new: tw feed
6. Add to the conversation tw post "new phone who dis"

Or as shell commands:

curl -L https://github.com/ericyd/twittier/releases/download/1.0.0/twittier-1.0.0-linux.zip > twittier-1.0.0-linux.zip
unzip twittier-1.0.0-linux.zip
ln -s "$(pwd)/twittier-1.0.0-linux/tw" /usr/local/bin/tw
tw init
vi ~/.twitter_credentials.toml
# insert credentials ^
tw feed

API

init

Initializes the credentials file. Generally you want to run this first and then create a Twitter developer account and populate the credentials

Arguments

• -c, --credentials (Optional)

Examples

# Defaults to ~/.twitter_credentials.toml
tw init
# Custom file
tw init -c ~/my-custom-credentials-file

post

Alerts the world that you are still alive.

Aliases

• tweet
• p

Arguments

• message (Required)
• replies (Optional)
• -p, --profile (Optional). Allows you to specify an alt account to use

Examples

tw post "I might have poor grammar but so are you"
tw tweet "Calamine lotion tastes funny"
tw p 'Who took the cookies from the cookie jar? Twas me, bitches'

Posting a thread

Twittier has first-class threading support. Simply include multiple messages when calling tw post and it will automatically thread!

Examples

tw post "i have OPINIONS" "you will LISTEN TO ME" "if you don't there will be DIRE CONSEQUENCES"

Posting a multi-line tweet

Sometimes you want some whitespace in your thread, like extra lines and stuff. Well too bad, asshole! It isn't supported yet.

Using an alt profile

If you want to use with multiple profiles, you'll need to set up your credentials file as follows

[default]
api_key = ""
api_key_secret = ""
access_token = ""
access_token_secret = ""

[alt1]
api_key = ""
api_key_secret = ""
access_token = ""
access_token_secret = ""

Running commands without a -p or --profile argument will use the default credentials, whereas specifying a profile will use those credentials. For example

tw post "can confirm: @ericydauenhauer is def a human" --profile alt1

delete

Delete a prior lapse in judgment

Arguments

• id (Required)

Examples

tw delete 123456

like

Like a tweet

Arguments

• tweet_id (Required)

Examples

tw like 123456

unlike

Unlike a tweet

Arguments

• tweet_id (Required)

Examples

tw unlike 123456

home

Read your recently posted tweets (good for the ego)

Arguments

• count (Optional)
  • Must be between 5 and 100

Options

• next-token (Optional) next pagination token
• dump (Optional) writes the raw JSON response to a file

Examples

tw home
tw home 42
tw home 42 --dump

me

Get some info about yourself

Examples

tw me

feed

See what people are saying about you

Arguments

• count (Optional)
• dump (Optional) writes the raw JSON response to a file

Examples

# Defaults to 10 or something
tw feed
# Get an exact number (less than 100 plz)
tw feed 42
# Write to a file
tw feed 42 --dump

version

Print useful information that you will need when you're filing bug reports for this software

Examples

tw -v
tw version
tw --version

help

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope.

Examples

tw -h
tw help
tw --help

Global arguments

• --debug: Prints a bunch of extra info
• help, --help, -h: Include with another argument to get specific help message for that command.
• -c, --credentials: If you prefer for some bizarre reason to customize the location of your credentials file, you'll have to specify this flag every time

tw post "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck donald trump" --debug
tw post -h
tw feed --help
tw init help
tw init -c /path/to/custom/file.toml

Building from source

1. Install Rust and Cargo

Note: If you are using Rust < 1.58, you need to install the nightly toolchain for the strip feature. You'll also need to add cargo-features = ["strip"] to the top of Cargo.toml

2. Clone and build

# Clone repo as needed
git clone https://github.com/ericyd/twittier && cd twittier

# Build
cargo build --release
# Or, if cargo wasn't installed with Rustup, invoke directly
rustup run cargo build --release

# create link
ln -s "$(pwd)/target/release/tw" /usr/local/bin/tw

# Use it
tw -h

Releasing

Turns out cross-compiling is quite hard locally so just use GitHub Actions - its free!

Oh but be sure to bump the version first

# cut tag
git tag 1.0.0 -s
# you're done, GH Actions does the rest 🙌
git push --tags

Troubleshooting

I am getting authentication errors

Be sure to generate an access token and secret after you update your app to have Read & Write permissions. The default is Read-only which will not work.

Acknowledgements

• Fonts in logo: Procrastinating Pixie and Lemon Milk

Footnotes

• ¹This has never been, and will never be, measured
• ²Non-functional Tweets

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Follow me @ericydauenhauer for good times