I always thought Swift was just for making apps for iPhones and Apple products, but apparently it's now available for Android too 😳✨
Apple officially announced the "Swift SDK for Android," and it's actually quite interesting... I'd love to share what I found 💡
What is the Swift SDK for Android?
Simply put, it's a toolkit that lets you use code written in Swift for Android apps too 🧰
Until now, Swift was only for iOS and Mac, so Android apps were typically made with Java or Kotlin. But with this SDK, you can run Swift code on Android too 🎉
How do you use it?
It's not the full release yet—only "nightly builds" (like the latest test versions for developers)—but here's what's happening:
- The Swift standard library now supports Android
- The compiler can convert Swift code into Android binaries
- There are also plans to enable access to Android's native APIs (like screen and sensor operations)
So they're gradually preparing to make it easier to use for Android development 👀✨
Why is this exciting?
At first I thought, "Huh? Is there really a point to making Android apps with Swift?" But there are some benefits:
- Sharing the same Swift code between iOS and Android makes development easier
- Teams can standardize on their preferred language, reducing learning costs
- People already familiar with Swift don't have to struggle learning Kotlin or Java from scratch
That's pretty nice, right? 👍
Some things to keep in mind
However, the SDK is still in early development, and many features aren't supported yet. So it's not really at the "let's use it heavily right now!" stage—more like something to keep an eye on as it evolves 💭
Also, the UI part for Android still needs to be built with other languages or tools, so you can't create a complete Android app using only Swift. That's something to watch out for ⚠️
I'm kind of excited that Swift isn't just an Apple-only language anymore 🌸
If mobile app development environments become more flexible, it could lead to lots of new ideas. If you're curious, it might be worth trying out? 🥺✨
Hatena
Comments
ロバート
Is Swift actually usable now? A year and a half ago the environment was rough, and I struggled with Linux support due to lack of documentation. Can someone update me on the current situation?
ハンナ
It's cool, but since it can't target Linux deb or rpm packages, it's not for me (and it's different from Flutter).
グレース
Honestly at this stage I'd just use Flutter.
ベン
Weren't humans supposed to stop coding soon? Why are we investing in abstractions for people again? 😅
ジャック
Update me in a month!
