X Rebuilt Its Android App From Scratch After More Than a Year of Work

X shipped a fully rebuilt X Android app on July 20, replacing its old codebase with a ground-up rewrite after more than a year of engineering work. Nikita Bier, X's head of product, described it as one of the largest engineering projects in the company's history. Google Play users worldwide can update to the new version now.

Every Core Interaction Got Faster - Scrolling, Loading, Notifications

X's engineering team modernized the app's foundation rather than patching the old one. Scrolling is smoother, content loads faster, and notifications arrive more reliably - three areas Android users have complained about since X rebranded from Twitter in 2023. Early users testing the update called it "a work of art," with several noting it finally feels on par with the iOS version.

Minor bugs have surfaced in the rollout, including video glitches that the team is already pushing quick fixes for. A ground-up rewrite always carries that risk - shipping fast matters more than waiting for perfection, and the underlying architecture is now built to fix issues faster too.

Video Editor and Spaces Are Next Up for Android

Two features Android users have been waiting on move to the front of the queue now that the foundation is solid. X's Video Editor - which launched on iOS with multilingual captions and green screen earlier this month - is coming to Android next. Spaces, X's live audio rooms, will follow.

For X, catching Android up to iOS matters more than it might seem. Android accounts for the majority of global smartphone users, and a worse app experience on the dominant platform has a real cost in engagement. Android users being effectively second-class citizens on X for years is an uncomfortable fact the company rarely acknowledged publicly - until now.