GoodTwitter 2 is a userscript that restores Twitter's legacy interface

Ashwin
Jun 23, 2020
Firefox, Firefox add-ons, Google Chrome, Google Chrome extensions
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6

Remember GoodTwitter? It was a very useful add-on that helped users stick to the legacy interface of Twitter.

Twitter new interface

It did so by spoofing the browser's user-agent to an older version, which tricked the social network to load the old UI.

Last month, Twitter began displaying a banner that the legacy version was being discontinued with effect from June 1st, 2020. And that's exactly what happened. Zusor, the developer of GoodTwitter announced that due to Twitter's decision to stop the old interface, there was no choice but to abandon the extension. This meant all users on desktop browsers were stuck with the new and horrible mobile-centric design.

Since I rely on Twitter for news, alerts, communication with friends, fellow writers, companies, etc, I couldn't just stop using the service. I couldn't tolerate the new interface either. The same goes with reddit's new interface, but at least we can by-pass that by substituting old in place of www in the URL. The new Twitter interface not only looked different, but also had some scrolling issues, and when clicking on Tweets it took me to a new page. This drove me to hunt for a different solution, maybe a different add-on to restore Twitter's old UI. But I will admit that I wasn't very hopeful.

A few days ago, I came across a possible fix in GoodTwitter 2 (by Electric Boogaloo). Though its name is very similar to the extension it replaced, it is in fact a userscript. So, you will need to use a userscript manager extension like ViolentMonkey to use it.

Warning: Just a heads-up about TamperMonkey. It is no longer open-source (since version 2.9) according to this article.

For some reason, GoodTwitter 2 isn't compatible with GreaseMonkey, which is the one I use. I tried installing the script with it, but that didn't work. So I decided to follow the developer's recommendation to use ViolentMonkey. I have both add-ons installed, and they co-exist without any issues.

How to restore Twitter's legacy interface with GoodTwitter 2

1. Install ViolentMonkey (or any script manager extension of your choice) for Firefox or Chrome.

2. Visit the official GitHub page to find the link for the user-script. Here's a direct link for it:

https://github.com/Bl4Cc4t/GoodTwitter2/raw/master/twitter.gt2eb.user.js

3. Opening the link should open a new tab in your browser, that asks you if you want to install the script. Allow it by clicking on the "confirm installation" button in the top right corner.

How to restore Twitter's legacy interface with GoodTwitter 2

4. Close the tab and visit Twitter.com

5. Hit F5 (or Ctrl-F5) to force the page to refresh.

Twitter's legacy thanks to GoodTwitter 2

That's it. Twitter's legacy interface should be back for you. This isn't a 1:1 replacement of the old interface, but it does look very similar.  The What's happening section is switched to the left replacing the side bar, the navigation bar (Home, notifications, messages), search button, Tweet button, are at the top, and the Who to Follow section is on the top right.

The script places an element on the left side bar that displays a link for its change-log, just hit the X button to close it. It does keep reappearing when you hit refresh.

Note: You must disable the original GoodTwitter extension for the new one to work. But considering that the old one doesn't work, there's no point in keeping it installed.

GoodTwitter 2 is an open source project. I tested it on Firefox and Microsoft Edge Chromium and it works nicely.

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Comments

  1. Alex G. said on July 28, 2021 at 9:13 pm
    Reply

    I was curious if there was a script like that that would do more or less the same thing with Facebook???

  2. Dave said on November 24, 2020 at 7:33 pm
    Reply

    Info re Tampermonkey

    from: https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey

    “This repository contains the source of the Tampermonkey extension up to version 2.9. All newer versions are distributed under a proprietary license.”

    TM Privacy Policy

    https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tampermonkey/privacy/

  3. John said on July 1, 2020 at 5:56 pm
    Reply

    Thanks for this but i am still getting my profile on the right side of the page any idea how to move it back to the left side like legacy twitter? thanks

  4. leland said on June 23, 2020 at 11:29 pm
    Reply

    If you use extensions to make sites dark I found the classic twitter interface looks better than the new one. Hence this is great. Thanks.

  5. Graham said on June 23, 2020 at 8:05 am
    Reply

    I’ve moved on to TweetDeck. It’s nice to be able to read multiple timelines at once without ads or clutter.

  6. The Equestrian said on June 23, 2020 at 8:01 am
    Reply

    That’s like with YouTube. The difference is that the old YouTube layout is a lot more responsive, faster and less resource-consuming. I’ve noticed that the transition between full screen for the video and off-full screen tends to be really choppy and delayed, even when using latest Google Chrome on a good PC.

    If I use the Inspect tool of the browser and delete all elements on the page save for the video, the transition improves. If I embed the video, the transition is instant. If I use toogl.es to watch videos (again embedded) the transition is instant.

    But the problem is that Google will probably remove that layout at some point so as to force people onto the new one and to force them to use up-to-date browsers.

    As for Twitter, I really don’t see a reason to bring back the old layout. Surprisingly, the new one is not bad and not any more resource-intensive, so I don’t see why would I want it. … But then again I spend like 5 minutes on Twitter per day and sometimes I don’t open it for days, so I don’t really care about it.

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