According to 9to5Mac, X has now blocked users from installing its iPad application on macOS, effectively abandoning the Mac platform entirely. This move comes after the company, then still called Twitter, killed its dedicated native Mac app and removed it from the Mac App Store last year. At that time, the company directed Apple Silicon Mac users to the iPad version available on the Mac App Store. Now, the listing for the X iPad app explicitly states it is not supported on the Mac, as spotted by multiple users on the platform. If you already have it installed, you can keep using its broken features, but for full functionality, you’re forced to the web version in a browser.
The Slow Death of a Mac App
Here’s the thing: this isn’t a sudden outage. It’s the final nail in the coffin of a long, painful decline. The iPad version on Mac was already a ghost town. The search function was completely broken. Try to open a link? You’d almost exclusively get an “Uh oh, an error was encountered” message. It was basically a barely-functional shell. So, while the technical move to block new installations is new, the practical experience for anyone trying to use it has been awful for a while. This just makes it official.
How Apple Silicon Apps Work
For a bit of technical context, one of the killer features of Apple’s own chips (M1, M2, M3) is that they can natively run iPhone and iPad apps. You just find them on the Mac App Store and hit install. But developers have a kill switch. They can opt out and prevent their mobile apps from being installed on macOS. That’s the simple toggle X just flipped. It’s a powerful control, and it shows that this wasn’t an accident or a glitch. It was a deliberate decision to cut off access.
A Shortsighted Strategy?
So, why do this? The charitable read is that X disabled Mac support while it fixes the rampant bugs in the iPad app. But let’s be real—that’s pure speculation, and the track record doesn’t inspire confidence. The more likely scenario is that maintaining any semblance of a dedicated app experience for Mac users is just not a priority. Remember, this is the same leadership that killed off third-party clients entirely. Driving everyone to the web or the official mobile apps centralizes control and… well, it’s cheaper. But is forcing your users into a browser tab really the best experience for a platform built on real-time conversation? Seems like a great way to make the service feel less essential.
What’s Left for Mac Users
Now, if you’re a Mac user, your options are bleak. You can struggle with the crippled, existing iPad app if you still have it. You can use the web version in Safari or Chrome. Or, you can just spend less time on X. For a company supposedly racing to build an “everything app,” completely abandoning a major desktop computing platform is a bizarre choice. It fragments the experience and tells a whole segment of users they’re not important. In the end, this feels less like a technical decision and more like another cultural one under the current regime.
