I feel like I’ve been in a Twitter hole for the last few days. It started with the slap heard around the world — the one that set a new record on Twitter for engagements. But as I went about reading and scrolling, I felt myself doing it too much and needed to pull myself back. At the same time, I needed to be able to monitor my accounts. This is where I found Away.

Away is like an answering machine for Twitter. With it, you can see an overview of your account and see what’s going on without the ability to reply or see other people’s tweets. It stops you from getting sucked into a Twitter hole and can reduce your time spent on the platform.

Upon launching the minimalist app, you’ll see which account you’re monitoring at the top. The app supports multiple accounts and it is easy to switch between them. Then, a series of inset bubbles will show your unanswered messages, how your last tweet performed, your follower count, and other important metrics.

Messages are a big deal for me on Twitter with new sources or review requests reaching out. When you check your messages in Away, if you do need to respond, a small arrow in the corner will jump you out of Away and into the thread within Twitter.

If you’re looking for your engagement and tweet status, that’s here too. You can see the tweet itself, how long ago you posted it, as well as how folks reacted. Metrics like the quotes, likes, replies, and retweets are all displayed. Like with messages, you can jump right to the tweet in the Twitter app to see the exact contents of the replies and to reply yourself.

Some people have different uses for Twitter, and Away acknowledges this by its ability to be customized. You can hide the retweets, quotes, likes, and replies and only see the metrics you care about. Personally, I love information and want to see it all.

There’s discussion that religiously watching your follower count can be mad for your mental health. Seeing it go up a number, up one more number, before falling two can be maddening. With the goal of disconnecting a bit, this is counter to Away’s purpose. For this, the app has the ability to show a rounded follower count, rather than the exact number. It is a small feature but one I appreciate that developer Hybrid Cat though of.

Social media sometimes seems to have too much control over our lives. I’ve spent way too long doom scrolling on social media time to time and Away is a great app to combat that. It still requires your own strength to not open the app, but there is only so much the developer can do. I think it’s great when paired with Screen Time where you can limit the use of app during part of a day. You can stop Twitter from opening and only allow yourself to use Away. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some unread DMs to get back to.

But enough about other people's apps.

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