Syrinx - a twitter client for OS X
January 7, 2009 by Sukrit Dhandhania
Syrinx is a pretty cool free twitter client from MRR Software. It’s been designed for MacOS Leopard. The biggest advantage of this client over it counterparts is the fact that you can customize it to a great degree. Let’s try it out. Head to the project’s website and download the latest release.
When the download completes open the folder where you saved Syrinx in. Drag and drop the file into your Applications folder. That’s the installation. Now double click on the Syrinx application in your Applications folder to launch it. It will ask you to enter your Twitter username and password. If you don’t already have one sign up for it a http://www.twitter.com.
I’d suggest checking the option Remember in Keychain to make your life easier by not having to type your password every time you use Syrinx. Your Twitter history should quickly load into the Syrinx main window. Let’s take a peek at what can be customized here. In the Syrinx menu at the top of your screen click on Syrinx -> Preferences.
There are a bunch of neat options here. You can customize how the application works, its appearance, and if you use Growl, how Syrinx works with Growl. Feel free to try out some of these options. After you are done playing with them close the Preferences window and return to the main screen.
On the main window there are a few options. The application allows you to Refresh your Twitter feed, to Pause it, to Bookmark a Tweet, to checkout your Friends list, and a feature I particularly like, it allows you to search your Twitter feed.
Click on the Friends button. A new window will pop up with a list of your Twitter friends list. Select a friend you want to message by clicking on his section and you can choose from a number of options what you want to do.
The Bookmark Newest option is also quite useful. By marking the latest tweet you make sure that you know where you left off so that when you return to Syrinx you can read all your unread Tweets from the feed.
The search box is probably the most useful feature I found in Syrinx. It allows you to search from the history of tweets for a person or a word. Very useful when you vaguely recall someone mentioning something in a tweet but you are not sure who. I’ve been there many times.
Outside of these useful features Syrinx also has a pretty handy set of keyboard shortcuts. For example, you can hit the spacebar to advance the bookmark one Tweet up. You can also hit the Return key to reply to the selected Tweet.
Though Syrinx has a neat looking interface they also offer a number of themes. To try them out to go the Syrinx Preferences and click on the Appearance tab. you will see a number of theme options under the Color Themes section.
Try them out and see if you like something. If you’re new to Twitter and are looking for someone to chat with, feel free to add Ross to your Twitter friends list. Happy Tweeting folks.
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