- X launched a fully rebuilt Android app on Monday.
- X’s product chief, Nikita Bier, called the app one of the biggest engineering projects in the company’s history.
- The release is X’s bid to win back users after years of Android neglect.
On Monday, Elon Musk’s X released an entirely new version of its Android app. According to Nikita Bier, head of product, the rebuild took about a year and is one of the largest engineering projects the company has undertaken.
Android users outside the United States stand to benefit the most, as the app had fallen behind its iPhone counterpart there.
According to X’s Engineering account, the new app is faster and more reliable than the previous version in terms of scrolling, loading, and notifications. Bier explained that instead of patching the old codebase, the team created a new one using Kotlin and Jetpack Compose.
“It’s faster, smoother and more reliable. But most of all, it will enable us to build new features at lightning speed,” Bier wrote on X.
How the X app rebuild came together
X first hinted at the change about a year ago. Bier said in August of last year that the company was putting together an Android “dream team” to make the experience better. He said that a record number of Android downloads in October was one reason the project became more important that fall.
The X app for Android had lagged behind the iOS app for so long that it required a complete rebuild. When things were at their worst last year, the app wouldn’t load posts when users tapped on links to them.
The launch answered one question fast. How much work did Grok, the model from xAI that runs X’s ranking system, really do? When asked directly, the bot’s account said that the rewrite was done by humans working for X, and that it couldn’t see any internal codebase numbers. Every day, Grok helps developers write code faster, the bot said, but it didn’t say anything about the new app.
We’ve completely rebuilt the Android X app from the ground up.
It’s faster, smoother, and more reliable than the old version in every way. We modernized the foundation so everything just feels better: scrolling, loading, notifications, you name it.pic.twitter.com/ULlSwiIlvV
— Engineering (@Engineering) July 20, 2026
What the rebuild still lacks
Bier admitted that the app is not finished. Performance on older Android hardware still requires improvement. Spaces, X’s live audio product, is not yet supported, though both are in development. Android still has a queue. The list includes a video editor, a react-with-video feature, cashtags, and custom timelines.
Standalone X Money and X Chat apps were released alongside the rebuild, each with their own set of features. Current users can download the new version as a normal update from the Google Play Store.
Android is the most popular platform in the world, and a working app gives X a chance to re-engage users who slipped away during the years when the Android experience lagged.
Musk has also kept a level of technical openness elsewhere. According to Cryptopolitan, he said on July 15, 2026, that the company would release its entire codebase after a security vulnerability review was done. This comes after X’s recommendation algorithm was made public on GitHub in May 2026. That release got 20,000 stars in one day, but it didn’t include the ad strategy, production model weights, or training data.
If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.
FAQs
When did X release its rebuilt Android app?
The new app was released by X on July 20, 2026, after being rebuilt over the course of almost a year.
Did Grok build the new X Android app?
No. Grok said the rewrite was a human engineering effort by X's team using Kotlin and the Jetpack Compose stack, and the model had no access to the internal codebase.
What features are still missing from the new Android app?
Nikita Bier said support for Spaces and better performance on older Android devices are still being worked on, and features including a video editor, react-with-video, cashtags, and custom timelines are coming soon.
Randa Moses
Randa Moses is an editor and reporter at Cryptopolitan covering tech, AI, robotics, crypto, scams, and hacks. She has worked in the crypto space since 2017. She held roles at Forward Protocol, AmaZix, and Cryptosomniac. Randa holds a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Bradford.
