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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.

AI2Day Newsdesk· 3 min read
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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, are not 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 did not patch the old version. It threw it away and started over.

The previous Android app had struggled for years. At one point last year, it could not even open posts when users tapped a link. While the iPhone version of the app kept improving, Android users got 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 live and available through the Google Play Store for anyone with an Android phone.

The new version runs on Kotlin and Jetpack Compose, a modern programming framework that Google recommends for Android development. That technical foundation matters for ordinary users because it is what makes the app feel snappier, and it is what lets engineers add new features more quickly.

What does this mean for people who use X on Android?

For most users, the practical change is simple: update your X app through the Google Play Store and you will get faster loading times, smoother scrolling, and more reliable notifications. The update is free and comes through the normal update process.

Bier did flag a few things that are not finished yet. Performance on older Android handsets still needs work. Spaces, which is X's live audio feature where users can host or join real-time conversations, is also not fully supported yet. A new video editor, a react-with-video option, cashtags (clickable links for stock symbols), and custom timelines are all coming in later updates.

X also noted the rebuild could help it attract or win back users in countries where Android phones dominate, which is most of the world outside North America and Western Europe.

Grok, X's own AI assistant, confirmed in a post on the platform that the rewrite was done by human engineers with no AI-generated code, calling it "a human engineering feat" on a clean technical foundation.

For now, existing Android users should simply update their app. New users can download it directly from the Google Play Store.

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