Better X

Character counter, word and selection tooltips, code formatting, and open-in-new-tab buttons for x.com.

Better X adds four small, self-contained upgrades to x.com. Nothing is replaced, nothing is hidden, and every feature is a toggle you can turn off. CHARACTER COUNTER A live count sits next to X's own progress ring in the composer, so you can see exactly how many characters you have used without decoding a circle. It mounts when you start typing and disappears when you clear the box. WORD AND SELECTION TOOLTIPS Hover any word in the composer to see what it costs in characters. Select a phrase and the tooltip switches to counting the selection, which makes trimming a post to fit far less of a guessing game. CODE FORMATTER X renders posts as plain text, so code loses its shape. Better X adds two buttons to X's own selection toolbar, next to Bold and Italic: </> converts the selection to Mathematical Monospace Unicode, and Aa converts it back to regular ASCII. The result is real text, so it stays selectable, copyable, and searchable, unlike a screenshot. OPEN POST IN NEW TAB Every post header gets a link next to the More menu that opens the post in a background tab, so you keep your place in the timeline. It is a real <a target="_blank"> element, so middle-click and Cmd-click or Ctrl-click behave exactly as you expect. The same action is also available from the right-click menu on any post. PRIVACY Better X makes no network requests. It collects no data, has no analytics, and needs no account. The only thing it stores is your four on/off toggles, via Chrome's settings sync. All code ships inside the package; nothing is loaded remotely. Open source: https://github.com/zirkelc/better-x