X rolls out rebuilt Android app after nearly a year of work

X has released a rebuilt version of its Android app, a meaningful update for a platform that reaches many users in markets where Android dominates. For investors watching social platforms, the move matters because app speed and reliability can affect user retention, feature adoption and advertising reach.

The Elon Musk-owned company said Monday through its X Engineering account that the Android app has been rebuilt from the ground up. X said the new version is designed to improve loading, scrolling, notifications and overall reliability.

The release follows nearly a year of work. In August, X head of product Nikita Bier said the company was assembling an Android “dream team” to improve the app experience. Later in the fall, Bier said X had recorded one of its strongest weeks for Android downloads in October, which he cited as a reason the Android overhaul had become a priority.

Bier described the rebuild on X as one of the largest engineering projects in the company’s history. He said the team did not just patch the existing app, but created a new version from scratch.

That distinction matters because a full rebuild can give engineers a cleaner base for future updates. In plain terms, the app’s foundation affects how quickly a company can add features, fix bugs and keep performance stable across different phones. Bier said the new Android app should help X develop new features faster.

The release lands as X has been adding more products beyond the main social feed. In recent months, the company has introduced X Money and X Chat, both of which were also given separate standalone apps, according to TechCrunch. A better Android base could help X bring more of those product updates to Android users without the same delays or instability.

X’s Android app had lagged behind its iOS app, according to TechCrunch. The gap had become visible enough that, at one point last year, Android users reported problems loading X posts after tapping links.

Still, the relaunch is not presented as finished work. Bier said X still needs to improve performance on older Android devices. He also said support for Spaces, X’s live audio feature, remains in progress.

Other Android features are also still on the way, according to Bier. He said X plans to add its new video editor, a react-with-video feature, cashtags and custom timelines to Android soon. Cashtags are ticker-style tags used on X to group posts about stocks, crypto tokens or other financial assets.

The role of artificial intelligence in the rewrite also came up after the launch. In a reply to a user asking how much code was written by Grok, X’s AI chatbot account said none of the rewrite was written by Grok and described the project as a human engineering effort by X’s team. The Grok account said the app was built on a Kotlin and Jetpack Compose stack, referring to common Android development tools.

Existing Android users can access the rebuilt app by updating X through the Google Play Store. X says the refreshed Android version is available globally.

This story draws on original reporting from TechCrunch.