The Twitter Android app is now being updated with a search bar for DMs. It's a relatively small feature, making it all the more curious why it took nearly 2 years to come to Android after Twitter added it to the iOS app back in 2019.
Over the years, Twitter has been no stranger at releasing new features on its iOS app before they come to Android. One of the more recent examples is Twitter Spaces. While Twitter Spaces initially began testing on the iOS app in November 2020, it wasn't found on Android until March 2021. This behavior is seen with plenty of other applications, too. Clubhouse has been available on iOS since April 2020. Its Android app? That didn't launch until this month. Situations like this are pretty easy to find, but Twitter has taken things to a whole new level with this DM search bar.
On August 14, 2019, Twitter announced it was testing a DM search bar for iOS and its web app. The feature works exactly as expected. It's used to look up DMs from people and groups, making it easy to find a specific conversation without endless scrolling. Up until now, however, it hasn't been available on the Android app. Thankfully, that's finally changing. On May 13, 2021, Twitter announced that the DM search bar is now rolling out for all Android users. Twitter doesn't provide any reasoning as to why adding the feature took so long, and it's likely it never will.
Twitter Is Also Improving DM Searches In Two Key Ways
Along with gracing Android users with the almighty search bar, Twitter is also changing how it works. As it currently stands on iOS and the web, the search bar will only lookup results from someone's most recent conversations. Now, Twitter says it "lets you search for all of your old convos, not just the most recent ones." Another update coming later this year will enable people to search for messages based on their contents. Twitter has previously limited users to searching the name of a person or group, so this should make finding messages considerably easier.
That's all great to hear, but here's to hoping something like this doesn't happen again. There's no problem with Twitter testing new features on iOS before Android, but to keep something like a search bar off the platform for almost 2 years is a bit ridiculous. It's likely this was just an oversight on Twitter's end and not an intentional delay, but whatever the reason, the whole thing is quite remarkable.
Source: Twitter