Twitter starts testing Spaces feature on Android devices

Clubhouse’s meteoric rise to the top of Apple’s App Store is a sign of how the novel coronavirus pandemic enabled a shift in discussions online from text to voice-enabled spaces. Following Clubhouse’s viral success, major tech companies like Facebook and Twitter are also working on alternatives to the service. The latter’s Spaces feature, which was previously being tested on iOS devices, is now slowly arriving on a few Android devices, according to reports.

According to Android Police, the feature was spotted by some users who found that being on the app’s latest beta version enabled support for Twitter’s new Spaces. Just like iOS devices, you can only join a room but won’t be able to start one yourself. According to some Android users on Twitter, signing up for the app’s latest alpha or beta versions and then uninstalling and reinstalling the Twitter app will enable the feature.

This is clearly a very early test of the feature from the company, seeing as the support documents for Twitter still state that it is being tested for iOS users. The Spaces feature for Android is clearly much further along than most people thought, though - which might give it an edge over Clubhouse, which is yet to announce a release date and is still working on its Android app.

However, there’s another limitation that seemingly severely cripples the experience further on Android - even if a host asks you to speak, you won’t be able to and can only participate as a listener. It appears that you will need the alpha version of the app to be able to speak. 

According to a user on Twitter, you need to be on version 8.84.0-alpha.06 of the Twitter app to be able to speak after being invited by a host. Users should probably stick with the beta version, though considering it is more stable than the bleeding edge alpha version.