JetBrains, the leading provider of professional software development tools, has released the stable version of Kotlin Multiplatform, a technology for sharing code among iOS, Android, desktop, web, server-side, and other platforms. It is already used by development teams at major companies, including Netflix, VMware, Cash App, McDonald’s, Electrolux, and Phillips.
Released in Beta in 2022, Kotlin Multiplatform allows developers to create applications for, and efficiently reuse code across, various platforms while retaining the benefits of native programming. Now stable, the framework delivers a fully-stabilized API, simplified project configuration, and better interoperability with Objective-C and Swift, as well as faster build times and other performance improvements.
“Where other technologies abstract away or completely replace platform-specific app development, Kotlin Multiplatform is complementary to existing platform-specific technologies and is geared toward replacing platform-agnostic business logic. It’s a new tool in the toolbox as opposed to replacing the toolbox,” said David Henry and Mel Yahya, Developers at Netflix.
The main benefit of Kotlin Multiplatform is its flexibility. Developers can share only part of their app’s logic and write native code if they want to interact with platform-specific APIs or build native UIs. When combining Kotlin Multiplatform with Compose Multiplatform, a declarative framework for sharing UIs across multiple platforms, developers gain even more freedom and can share up to 100% of their codebase – all in Kotlin. Compose Multiplatform is currently stable for Android and desktop, experimental for web, and in Alpha for iOS.
JetBrains continues to enhance Kotlin Multiplatform and Compose Multiplatform, as well as the tooling around them, aiming to make this combination of technologies the ultimate choice for sharing code between platforms.
“Now that Kotlin Multiplatform is stable, developers can feel much more confident about adopting it for their production projects, as JetBrains will be evolving Kotlin Multiplatform according to the strictest backward compatibility rules. Now is a great time to start using Kotlin Multiplatform for sharing code and to explore Compose Multiplatform’s capabilities for sharing UIs. We will continue improving the core technology, the libraries, and the tooling to provide the best multiplatform development experience to all,” said Ekaterina Petrova, Product Marketing Manager of Kotlin Multiplatform at JetBrains.
In addition to the improved Kotlin Multiplatform tooling, future updates will enhance the experience of iOS developers by delivering direct Kotlin-to-Swift interoperability and SwiftPM support. The next milestone for Compose Multiplatform is to deliver a Beta version for iOS in 2024. JetBrains is also actively developing Kotlin/Wasm to facilitate modern web development with Kotlin Multiplatform.
About JetBrains
JetBrains creates intelligent software development tools used by over 16 million professionals and 90 Fortune Global Top 100 companies. Its lineup of more than 30 products includes IDEs for most programming languages and technologies, such as IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, and others, as well as products for team collaboration, like YouTrack and Datalore. JetBrains is also known for creating Kotlin, a concise cross-platform language used for development on different platforms by more than 5 million developers worldwide yearly and recommended by Google as the preferred language for Android development. The company is headquartered in Prague, Czechia, and has offices around the world. For more information, please visit https://www.jetbrains.com/.
