Hibari is a lightweight, minimalist Twitter client for those who aren’t power users. Yet it has a remarkable number of essential features.
This Twitter client is very similar to my favorite, Syrinx from MRR Software. However, there are some differences. Syrinx is free while Hibari is US$14 with a 14 day free trial. Syrinx supports lists and windowed lists of friends and followers, while Hibari does not. Here’s what Hibari can do:
- URL Shortening
- Hide a specific tweet (not the same as blocking)
- Growl notifications for mentions or direct messages
- Favorites & Deleting tweets
- Search timeline and save searches
- Keyword blocks
- Mute a specific user without having to unfollow
- Send tweet on CMD+RETURN (optional)
- In-line images
- Silent operation
- Shows absolute rather than relative time
- Shows avatar of person who was retweeted
Here are some things Hibari doesn’t do with Syrinx as a rough, but not absolute, comparison guide.
- Lists
- Multiple Accounts
- Set frequency for checking timeline
- Play sounds
- Allow color customization of timeline
- Bookmarks
- Show both username and full name
- Show your own latest tweet
- Display the twitter client used for each tweet
- Pause and resume
The things that Hibari doesn’t do could be a deal breaker for some users, such as the lack of lists and multiple accounts, lack of sound alerts and the forced display of only username or full name but not both. One of our editors recommend Nambu as a good step up, but I can’t vouch for its complete feature set here.
Do I Recommend it?
Hibari seems to have a slightly skewed performance to price ratio. Osfoora on the iPad is highly regarded and is only US$3.99. Many other twitter clients for the Mac are free, but I support small developers who charge a fair price for good software. However, considering how minimalist Hibari is, I would have thought the developer would offer a 1.0 version for free, hook the users, then offer a paid upgrade to 2.0. That said, if you can live with the limitations and want a simple, reliable, clean Twitter client, I can recommend it. Mac OS X 10.6 or later is required.