Add Android blog post answering common questions and sharing more links and info #1249
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| layout: new-layouts/post | ||||||
| published: false | ||||||
| date: 2025-11-21 10:00:00 | ||||||
| title: "Exploring the Swift SDK for Android" | ||||||
| author: android-workgroup | ||||||
| category: "Developer Tools" | ||||||
| --- | ||||||
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| Since the announcement of [the preview Swift SDK for Android last month](/blog/nightly-swift-sdk-for-android/), | ||||||
| the Android workgroup has seen a lot of questions about how it works and what's next. Please read on for those answers. | ||||||
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| ## Swift in the World of Android | ||||||
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| Swift compiles directly to native machine code on Android, the same way it does on other | ||||||
| platforms. This gives it similar performance to C and C++ code using the Android Native | ||||||
| Development Kit (NDK), while achieving a happier balance between performance, safety, | ||||||
| and usability. To make this possible, Swift apps on Android bundle a native runtime | ||||||
| that implements many of its features, including its standard library and core | ||||||
| libraries like Dispatch and [Foundation](/blog/foundation-preview-now-available/). | ||||||
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| However, since most Android APIs are only made available through Java and Kotlin, | ||||||
| Swift must call into the Android Runtime (ART). That is where the [Java interoperability | ||||||
| project's](https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-java) `jextract` and `wrap-java` | ||||||
| tools come in. These tools automatically create bindings that enable you to call | ||||||
| Swift from Java or go the other way using the Java Native Interface (JNI), which | ||||||
| allows Swift to seamlessly integrate with the Android platform. The [`jextract` | ||||||
| tool gained a JNI mode recently](/blog/gsoc-2025-showcase-swift-java/): | ||||||
| please watch its author Mads Odgaard's [Server Side Swift Conference talk from last month](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOH6V1IvTAc). | ||||||
| You can also check out [his hello-swift example in the Android examples repository](https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-android-examples/tree/main/hello-swift-java). | ||||||
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| ## Swift on Android in production | ||||||
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| Android apps built with Swift have millions of downloads and have been in production | ||||||
| for many years. Here are some notable examples: | ||||||
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| - [Spark](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.readdle.spark) - A popular email client using Swift to share code between mobile iOS/Android and desktop macOS/Windows versions | ||||||
| - [flowkey](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flowkey.app) - An interactive piano learning app built with Swift for Android for almost a decade | ||||||
| - [MediQuo](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mediquo.main) - A healthcare app leveraging Swift for cross-platform development | ||||||
| - [Naturitas](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.naturitas.android) - An organic products marketplace running Swift in production | ||||||
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| ## Coming up Next | ||||||
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| Grassroots community efforts to run Swift on Android [began as soon as the language source was opened in 2015](https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-dev/Week-of-Mon-20151207/000171.html), | ||||||
| and continue to this day. [The Android project board lists areas the workgroup determines important](https://github.com/orgs/swiftlang/projects/17), | ||||||
| such as easy debugging, now a high priority for us. While it [mostly works in limited use](https://github.com/swiftlang/llvm-project/issues/10831), | ||||||
| we need to test it more and make it easy to access. That will likely mean tying | ||||||
| the debugger and [Swift Language Server Protocol tool, sourcekit-lsp](/blog/gsoc-2025-showcase-code-completion/), | ||||||
| into editors like [Visual Studio Code](/blog/gsoc-2025-showcase-swiftly-support-in-vscode/), | ||||||
| Android Studio, and [CodeEdit](https://www.codeedit.app/), another issue on our board. | ||||||
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| ## Sharing Logic Versus Sharing UI | ||||||
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| Swift on Android is primarily suited to sharing business logic, as we do not provide | ||||||
| a cross-platform GUI toolkit. As we write in [our draft vision document](https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/807b844be42db582e434d1667fc907ae7a7a8775/visions/android.md), | ||||||
| the Android workgroup has no plans to create such a GUI toolkit, but will instead | ||||||
| curate a list of cross-platform UI tools. | ||||||
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| See [our recent post in the Swift forums](https://forums.swift.org/t/swift-gui-toolkits-for-android/83337) | ||||||
| that lists a handful of popular and in-progress options we found, but have not yet | ||||||
| validated regarding what their authors claim. We will work with those devs in the | ||||||
| coming months to add more info on using their GUI tools with the Swift SDK for Android. | ||||||
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| ## Diving in | ||||||
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| Finally, we intend to bring you interviews and information from those using Swift | ||||||
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| on Android already, as pioneers like [Readdle](https://readdle.com/blog/swift-for-android-our-experience-and-tools) | ||||||
| and [Flowkey](https://medium.com/@ephemer/why-we-put-an-app-in-the-android-play-store-using-swift-96ac87c88dfc) | ||||||
| have written about using Swift on Android for the last decade. The Left Bit's Pierluigi Cifani | ||||||
| [wrote about their experiences recently](https://forums.swift.org/t/thoughts-on-swift-for-android/80961), | ||||||
| gave [a great talk at NSSpain 2025 a couple months ago](https://youtu.be/EIGl6GOo210), | ||||||
| and was [interviewed by Swift Toolkit last month](https://www.swifttoolkit.dev/posts/dc-pier). | ||||||
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| Swift on Android has been a community effort for the last decade, snowballing | ||||||
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There was a problem hiding this comment. Prefer the real-world term |
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| from that initial patch to many businesses and developers making their livelihood | ||||||
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There was a problem hiding this comment. This ties into the production examples above and is a better case the way it is. |
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| with it today. [Try out the preview SDK snapshots](/documentation/articles/swift-sdk-for-android-getting-started.html) | ||||||
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| and help us make it even better! | ||||||
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I'd suggest revising this; currently it sounds like it's committing to future written content. Instead, perhaps it can framed along the lines of existing resources to learn more.
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That is what we're committing to, more written content.