Twitter for iOS updates to 5.3 bringing better searching, snappier everything

Twitter has just launched a pretty significant update to its official iOS app, introducing improvements to search functionality and performance on both iPhone and iPad. Specifically, the app now has a prominent search button at the top which Twitter promises will return more relevant results across users, pictures and tweets.

The app is also optimized to be faster overall, especially on older devices, and inline links now launch instantly. You can see the full list of changes and additions below:

• Discover delivers a single stream of Tweets, Trends, Activity and accounts to follow. Pull to refresh or keep scrolling to see more content.

• Search now shows the most relevant mix of people, Tweets and photos.

• It's also easier to use search with one button at the top of the app.

• You can see your five most recent searches and tap them to redo the search, or you can clear your recent search history.

• Links instantly open web pages when you tap URLs in your stream.

• Performance improvements make launch times faster, especially for older iOS devices.

• Connect shows interactions like new followers, retweets and mentions by default. You can switch to "view mentions only" in settings.

• Improved right-to-left language support for Arabic and Hebrew.

• Bug fixes and other improvements.