X has released a completely rebuilt version of its Android app, closing out nearly a year of engineering work aimed at fixing an experience that had long trailed the platform’s iOS version.
A Rebuild, Not Just an Update
The company said the new app was built from the ground up rather than patched over the old codebase. Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, described the project as one of the largest engineering efforts in the company’s history, carried out by a small team of roughly a dozen engineers on a modern Kotlin and Jetpack Compose foundation. He said the result is faster, smoother, and more reliable in every way, and that the real payoff is how much quicker the company can now ship new features.
The rebuild traces back to August 2025, when Bier first said X was assembling an Android “dream team” after a sharp rise in Android downloads exposed how far the app had fallen behind its iOS counterpart. That gap had been a long-running complaint among users, and the scale of the fix reflects how seriously X treated it.
What Changes for Users
Existing users can get the new version through the Google Play Store. The company says the update brings noticeably better loading times, smoother scrolling, and more dependable notifications, changes meant to be felt rather than announced. Beyond speed, the rebuilt foundation is designed to let X’s engineers add features faster than the old architecture allowed.
The company was candid that the release is not fully finished. Performance improvements for older Android devices are still in progress, and Spaces, X’s live audio feature, is not yet supported on the new build. Bier said additional tools are coming soon, including a new video editor, a react-with-video feature, cashtags, and custom timelines. Notably, upcoming features are now expected to reach Android before iOS, a reversal of the usual pattern where Apple users get new tools first.
Part of a Bigger Push
The Android rebuild fits into a broader expansion at X under Elon Musk’s ownership, which has been rolling out standalone products including X Money and X Chat, the latter having added encrypted messaging, calls, file sharing, and disappearing messages to Android earlier this year. Framing itself increasingly as an everything app spanning payments, messaging, and video, X appears to be treating Android as central to that ambition rather than an afterthought, given how much of its global user base runs the platform.
