Swift SDK for Android is Now Available in Preview

Four months after announcing the project, Swift.org has released the first Swift SDK for Android in preview.

“Swift has matured significantly over the past decade, extending from cloud services to Windows applications, browser apps, and microcontrollers, [it] powers apps and services of all kinds, and thanks to its great interoperability, you can share code across platforms,” Swift maintainer Joannis Orlandos writes in the announcement post. “Today, we are pleased to announce nightly preview releases of the Swift SDK for Android.”

According to Orlandos, developers can now use the Swift SDK for Android to create apps for, and port existing Swift packages to, that platform. There’s also a related swift-java project that includes a library and a code generator so developers can “integrate Swift and Java in both directions” and bring existing business logic to Android.

“The Android workgroup is drafting a vision document, currently under review, for directing future work regarding Swift on Android,” Orlandos continues. “This vision will outline priority areas and guide community efforts to maximize impact across the ecosystem.”

As you might expect, there is a lot of document to help developers get started with writing native Swift code for Android. This includes a Getting Started guide, a set of Swift for Android examples, and a YouTube recording of a talk by Mads Odgaard explaining how Swift/Java bindings work.

You can find the nightly builds of the Swift SDK for Android on Swift.org.