Apple is working on official Android support for its Swift programming language. For this purpose, a special working group, the Swift Android Working Group, has been created, which aims to adapt Swift to the needs of Android developers and eliminate dependence on third-party solutions. This is reported by 9to5Google.
Key tasks include ensuring stable Android support in Swift, improving compatibility with key libraries (such as Foundation and Dispatch), defining the level of support for different Android versions, and implementing continuous testing of changes to Swift with Android in mind.
Special attention will be paid to Swift integration with the Java SDK, packaging Swift libraries for Android applications, and debugging support. In the future, this will allow developers to fully use Swift not only for iOS, macOS, or Linux, but also to create Android applications without third-party tools.
Swift was introduced by Apple in 2014 as a replacement for Objective-C. It currently supports macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, Windows, and Linux. Android has remained unsupported, although enthusiasts have been using Swift through third-party solutions, including Scade.