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Twitter wants to give your photos and videos ‘more room to shine’

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Twitter is tweaking its timeline in a new test designed to give photos, videos, and GIFs “more room to shine.”

What exactly does that mean? Well, if it gets rolled out to everyone beyond the test phase, you’ll see visual media increasing in size to fill more of the display on your iPhone (ah, yes, it’s an iPhone-only feature at the moment).

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At the current time, pictures, videos, and GIFs leave a little bit of space on the left and right of the display, but the new look broadens the image to fill in those gaps. The larger image also means less space on your display for other tweets (unless you decrease the text size via Settings > Display and sound). It’s not clear if Twitter is considering the new look as an option alongside the current format or whether it would replace it entirely.

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Twitter posted a short video this week to show exactly how the new look appears on an iPhone display:

Now testing on iOS:

Edge to edge Tweets that span the width of the timeline so your photos, GIFs, and videos can have more room to shine. pic.twitter.com/luAHoPjjlY

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) September 7, 2021

Perhaps the only surprising part of the new look is that it isn’t already part of the microblogging site, especially considering how Twitter is mainly a visual medium these days.

Twitter hasn’t said how many users are involved in the test phase. The only way to find out if you’re part of it is to fire up your Twitter app and see if the feature is already live on your feed. If not, then standby — it could be incoming for all users soon.

Earlier this year, Twitter made another tweak to images in the timeline when it launched full-size previews. Before the update, Twitter cropped non-horizontal images, which meant the you always had to tap on the picture to see it in full. That particular feature is live now for all iPhone and Android users.

In another recent test, Twitter has been exploring new ways for you to share your tweets. For example, one option would let you share particular tweets with “trusted friends” instead of with everyone.

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Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
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