Recently, the Swift community established the Swift on Android Community Workgroup, aiming to promote the use of Swift in the Android ecosystem. This initiative follows a similar path to how the Arc browser advanced Swift’s development on the Windows platform. Notably, members of the Skip team, which specializes in cross-platform development, have also joined the working group. Although still in its early stages, this undoubtedly marks an important step for the Swift community in breaking down platform barriers.
For developers deeply entrenched in the Apple ecosystem, the possibility of using the familiar Swift language to develop Android applications is an exciting prospect. However, the path to cross-platform development is far from smooth. Much of Swift’s infrastructure, from official frameworks to numerous third-party libraries, is tightly intertwined with Apple’s platforms. To achieve true cross-platform development, the community needs to build a comprehensive set of platform-agnostic APIs, which remains a significant challenge for most developers.
Fortunately, the open-source community is contributing to Swift’s cross-platform journey. The OpenSwiftUI project recently released the implementation of ViewList, a critical component for understanding the private APIs of SwiftUI’s View protocol. Combined with the progress of OpenGraph, the development pace of OpenSwiftUI is expected to accelerate, and a version supporting basic view functionality could be available to developers within the next few months. Meanwhile, the Point-Free team’s Sharing GRDB project offers a fresh approach to cross-platform data persistence.
Despite Swift’s impressive potential in the cross-platform space, the challenges ahead cannot be overlooked. Beyond technical hurdles, nurturing the community ecosystem and refining the development toolchain are equally crucial. For Swift to truly break free from the Apple ecosystem, it will require not only the community’s relentless efforts but also the active participation of developers at large.
I also hope that Apple will open up more of its official Swift frameworks. Swift’s success on other platforms will not undermine the Apple ecosystem; on the contrary, such openness could attract more developers to embrace Apple’s platform.
The vitality of technology lies in its openness and universality. A more open Swift will not only advance cross-platform development but also bring more innovation and possibilities to the entire developer community. Let Swift evolve from being “Apple’s language” to becoming “the world’s language” as soon as possible.
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[Mastering SwiftUI Scrolling: Implementing Custom Paging](https://fatbobman.com/en/posts/mastering-swiftui-scrolling-implementing-custom-paging/?utm_source=fatbobman weekly issue 71&utm_medium=web)
Since iOS 17, SwiftUI introduced scrollTargetBehavior, providing developers with more precise scrolling control, such as paging and view alignment. However, in landscape mode, the default paging behavior has alignment offset issues. This article explores how scrollTargetBehavior works through a real-world case study and discusses how to customize ScrollTargetBehavior to achieve precise and stable paging scrolling.
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