Twitter says it is testing edge-to-edge pictures and videos in tweets on iOS to better support visual and text-based conversations
Ian Carlos Campbell / The Verge : Tweets: @twittersupport , @boo , @simoncurtis , @larakate , and @megalo224 Tweets: @twittersupport : 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. https://twitter.com/... Bruce.Falck / @boo : We're very excited about this, thank you to all the teams that have worked really hard to get us to this point 🙏 https://twitter.com/... Simon Curtis / @simoncurtis : Oh I was selected for this horrible experiment that's why the app is completely unusable. Change me back @Twitter I beg of you 😭 https://twitter.com/... Lara Cohen / @larakate : Communities offers so much promise for our partners. Imagine livetweeting with superfans of @insecurehbo or @succession. @taylorswift13 talking directly to swifties. Or watching a game with @Lakers fans together. A way for partners to connect directly w the most passionate folks. https://twitter.com/... Megalo / @megalo224 : something i always liked about twitters design more than other social medias is it feels like i have space to breathe on the screen, like the whole thing isnt taken up by my feed, and it feels nice, but like this shit is just kinda gonna be a thing probably so oh well https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This test is the latest step in a deliberate widening of media's footprint on Twitter's timeline: after testing large uncropped images in place of cropped previews in March, the company rolled 4K photo uploads out to everyone by April. Edge-to-edge tweets extend that same logic from image resolution to layout itself — media now spanning the full width of the timeline rather than sitting inside a card.
First-order effects
- iOS users pulled into the experiment see their timelines reflow around full-width photos, GIFs, and videos — and at least one tester, Simon Curtis, publicly called the result 'completely unusable,' signaling layout friction even among early recipients.
- Bruce Falck, who leads Twitter's revenue products, publicly celebrated the change, indicating the product and monetization teams view the wider canvas as groundwork for richer media surfaces rather than a cosmetic tweak.
Second-order effects
- A timeline-width media canvas feeds directly into Twitter's ad ambitions: the company had already moved to full-screen Fleets ads weeks earlier, and every expansion of organic media real estate enlarges the inventory advertisers can buy into.
- Creators and publishers posting photos and videos gain more visual prominence per tweet, raising the stakes for text-only accounts whose posts shrink proportionally in a media-forward layout.
Third-order effects
- The trajectory runs from bigger images to full-width media to the TikTok-like full-screen video scrolling UI Twitter announced for iOS the following year — a structural convergence toward immersive, video-first feeds regardless of whether individual tests stick.
- If the pattern holds, the text-first identity that differentiated Twitter becomes harder to sustain, forcing the platform to reconcile conversation-centric design with the engagement economics of full-screen media.
The trend: Twitter has spent 2021-2022 steadily converting the timeline from a text card layout into an increasingly full-screen, video-first surface.