Exploring the Swift SDK for Android

The Android workgroup just dropped Swift 6.3 SDK nightly previews for Android, and several production apps with millions of downloads are already proving it works at scale.

Swift's Android workgroup published a deep dive into how Swift runs natively on Android, compiling directly to machine code like C/C++ while maintaining better safety and usability. The post reveals production apps already using Swift on Android and announces official Swift 6.3 SDK previews with new tooling improvements.

Key Takeaways

• Swift compiles to native Android code via NDK, matching C/C++ performance
• Spark, flowkey, and other apps already have millions of Swift-powered Android downloads
• New @available attribute brings familiar iOS API versioning patterns to Android
• JNI bridging tools (jextract, wrap-java) enable seamless Swift-to-Java interop
• Official Swift 6.3 SDK nightly builds now available with CI pipeline

The workgroup's vision document hints at their GUI strategy, and they're hosting recurring contributor calls to expand the ecosystem.