Twitter: Now you can jazz up your retweets with GIFs, photos, and videos

Twitter now lets you add GIFs, photos, and videos to retweets. Until now, you could only add text.

The new feature landed on Monday, May 6 for Android, iOS, and Twitter’s mobile site, though it’s not yet available for the desktop version. Be sure to update to the latest version of the mobile app to make use of it.

The process is simple enough. Just tap the retweet button and select “retweet with comment.” Then, to add media, tap on the appropriate icon above the keyboard. The first time you select the comment option, you should see a message from Twitter pointing out the new functionality.

Today we are introducing an update you’ve been waiting for — drum roll please — Retweet with GIF, photos, and video! Read on to get the behind-the-scenes process of why and how we designed this feature. https://t.co/UMMPkhoaFL

— Twitter Design (@TwitterDesign) May 6, 2019

“People come to Twitter to share their thoughts on interests, events, and news, and we wanted to give them more ways to express themselves,” Twitter’s design team said on Monday, adding, “Also, you asked for this.”

It said during the initial test phase the layout was too cluttered, making it difficult for people to quickly understand what they were looking at.

“To improve comprehension, we focused on creating hierarchy, prioritizing the author’s voice, and providing more context around the tweet being retweeted,” the team said.

With that in mind, it ran a second test that introduced a condensed inner tweet presented in a similar way as a pull quote “to help differentiate the two components of the retweet. Participants reacted well to it.”

After further testing that brought more user feedback, it decided to opt for a box container that offers a clearer visual hierarchy with a condensed inner tweet, and which also includes an avatar in that inner tweet designed to help users quickly see who’s talking.

The company added that another update is coming soon to make retweets with media “more interactive and easier to read.” Hopefully, this refers to Twitter on desktop, as the new feature fails to show in the same way as it does for mobile, making it a little harder to view.

Twitter said recently that it’ll soon be testing another new feature, one that lets users hide replies to tweets. Rolling out in June 2019, it’s hoped that the feature will lead to more respectful and meaningful Twitter exchanges by enabling the original poster to filter out offensive or irrelevant content from conversation threads.