Mr. Musk may have successfully pushed Twitter’s new name and logo, ‘X’, and even made the vanity domain x.com redirect to the social media website, but that’s not to say, the Mathematical double-struck letter will fit the bill everywhere.
Turns out, Apple’s App Store can’t accept the new name for Twitter’s iOS app because of minimum character requirements.
Update, July 31 02:30 AM ET: Apple App Store has now revised the name of ‘Twitter’ to ‘X,’ roughly two days after the publication of this piece.
Twitter still Twitter on App Store
This week, both Google Play and Apple’s App Store pushed updated versions of the Twitter app respectively for Android and iOS users.
The latest app version bears the ‘X’ logo, and in some cases, Twitter’s new name.
BleepingComputer observed, for example, that Google Play store page for the Android app now bears the name ‘X’ not Twitter:
The app, however, still shows up as “Twitter” among installed apps on an Android, and the application package (APK) ID remains com.twitter.android internally:
This is in stark contrast to the latest version of Twitter’s iOS app, which unfortunately couldn’t be renamed to ‘X’ on the App Store—and it’s got to to with the minimum number of characters an iOS app name must have.
“On iOS, the situation is distinct as Apple does not permit any app to have a single character as their app name,” data scientist and Next founder, Nick Sheriff pointed out.
“Twitter was able to change the logo of their iOS app but not the name, since Apple requires app names to be at least 2 characters,” mocked San Francisco-based Erik Berlin.
While iOS app names “can be up to 30 characters long,” they must be at least 2 characters in length, failing which the app name will be rejected by Apple:
Some Apple users report seeing the ‘X’ app on their iPhone or iPad device after fetching the latest update, but the name restriction remains in effect on the App Store.
“What about X and a space, either before or after?” software developer Yusuf Alp suggested a potential workaround in response to Berlin’s post.
“He already has a company called SpaceX,” chuckled Berlin.
Twitter’s rushed and inconsistent rebranding seems to be causing issues in other areas—legal and technical, as well.
The app’s icon change to ‘X’ triggered security alerts for Microsoft Edge users this week, as BleepingComputer first reported.
Internet content filters in some regions, like Indonesia, also started blocking the ‘x.com’ website, mistaking it for adult content.
Update, July 29th, 1:17 PM ET: Credited Sheriff who had originally tweeted about the App Store name restriction.
