We can’t talk about media applications without bringing one of the biggest, especially for live streaming. That, of course, would be Twitch. However, I believe that I have found the application that can rival their own and provide a better experience. Once again, this is an app that can be found on the F-droid store, so access to it is easy.
Twire is a bit different from applications like Newpipe where you can now sign into your Twitch account if you desire. But what makes Twire different and why would I use it over the official application? First and foremost, same as Newpipe, no ads. You can open any stream and not have to worry about seeing an ad every time you switch or come back to a stream. For me, that alone is a strong enough reason to use it.
But what is having no ads if the experience isn’t enjoyable? This is something that I feel like Twire does pretty well. It’s pretty simplistic yet flows well. Not only that, but it features different themes, such as light, dark and night. It follows the design of the official app with a slide out panel from the left, giving access to featured streamers, searching for streams or streamers you already follow.
A big feature that I haven’t seen in the official Twitch app is a timer function. This is perfect for people like me who watch streams late at night or replay streams and fall asleep to them. It is especially helpful in preventing wasted data or battery life. Again, I’m not sure if this feature is in the official Twitch application, but I have deleted it since I installed Twire.
As for chatting, it is there. Partially, anyway. From what I have seen, there is no way to see a live chat replay when watching a finished stream. Not a huge deal, but can take out of the experience when watching smaller streamers who like to interact more with their community. You can still chat during live streams and read comments, so that functionality is still there. The only other con when it comes to chatting is that there is no way to directly message friends on Twitch. But chances are most people probably don’t message over twitch and instead use another program, such as Discord, Telegram or Riot.
Another issue that I seem to have off and on is a problem with thumbnails. I’m not sure what it is, but when browsing through the games being streamed or featured streams, the thumbnails will be completely grayed out. This happens to the icons of streamers as well, but when going to their channel, the thumbnails will load properly (or should). It could have just be my connection and the app trying to sync, which is why it’s fine now. It’s an occasional annoyance at most.
With that, that’s all I can really think of that can be said. It features nearly everything that the official Twitch app already does but offers a bit more. While it mainly lacks in its chatting capabilities such as live replay comments or chatting with friends, it makes up for it with everything else.
You can find Twire on the F-droid store here: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.perflyst.twire/