Twitter’s new ‘While you were away’ feature arrives on Android

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“While you were away” in action. Photo: Twitter

Twitter’s new “While you were away” feature, which helps you catch up with some of the interesting things you might have missed while you were offline, is now available on Android through the official Twitter app.

I love “While you were away,” which first make its debut on iOS just over a month ago, and I use it all the time. See, while working at my computer all day, I have Twitter open constantly — but as soon as I’m done with work, it can be four hours or more before I’ll get a chance to sit down and look at my phone.

I usually end up missing a lot of stuff during that time, but now Twitter helps me catch up quickly by curating tweets “determined by engagement and other factors” — it’s usually which ended up being most popular — and displaying them right at the top of my timeline.

If you’re a Twitter addict who always has the app open on your phone, you may never see it; you actually have to be away from your timeline to miss stuff. But if you only open Twitter occasionally, it’s going to appear quite a lot.

As you might expect, you need to be using the official Twitter app to see “While you were away,” and the latest version is available to download for free from Google Play; just follow the link below.