X Rebuilds Its Android App From the Ground Up After a Year of Work
The social network rewrote its Android app in a new technical framework, promising faster scrolling, better notifications, and a foundation for features that never made it to Android.
Key points
- X shipped a fully rewritten Android app on 20 July 2026, built from scratch rather than updated.
- Development began roughly a year ago, after X head of product Nikita Bier assembled a dedicated Android team in August 2025.
- The new app uses Kotlin and Jetpack Compose, a modern framework for building Android software.
- Bier called it "one of the largest engineering projects" in the company's history.
- Older-device performance and Spaces, the live audio feature, aren't yet fully supported.
X, the social network owned by Elon Musk, released a rebuilt Android app on Monday after nearly a year of development. The company didn't patch the old version. It threw it away and started over.
The previous Android app had struggled for years. At one point, it couldn't even open posts when users tapped a link. The iPhone version kept improving while Android users were left behind.
That changed in August 2025, when Bier said X was forming an Android "dream team." The rebuilt app, first reported by TechCrunch, is now available through the Google Play Store.
It runs on Kotlin and Jetpack Compose, a modern programming framework Google recommends for Android development. That technical shift matters to ordinary users because it's what makes the app feel snappier and lets engineers ship new features faster.
What does this mean for people who use X on Android?
For most users the practical change is straightforward: update through the Google Play Store and you'll get smoother scrolling, faster loading, and more reliable notifications.
Bier did flag a few rough edges. Performance on older Android handsets still needs work, and Spaces, X's live audio feature for hosting real-time conversations, isn't fully supported yet. A new video editor, a react-with-video option, cashtags (clickable links for stock symbols), and custom timelines are coming in later updates.
X also noted the rebuild could help it attract or win back users in markets where Android dominates, which covers most of the world outside North America and Western Europe. Bier said during the October 2025 period that X had one of its biggest weeks ever for Android downloads, which made the rebuild a priority.
Grok, X's AI assistant, confirmed in a post on the platform that the rewrite involved no AI-generated code, describing it as "a human engineering feat" on a clean Kotlin and Jetpack Compose foundation.
Existing Android users should update their app. New users can download it from the Google Play Store.
Should you worry about missing features?
Not yet. The absent features, Spaces above all, are confirmed as coming rather than cancelled. Watch Bier's posts on X for the rollout schedule. The bigger question is whether Android users who drifted to other platforms during years of neglect will bother coming back. A faster app is a necessary condition. It isn't a sufficient one.
