

Telegram may well be calculating that only a very small few number of its iOS users are likely that far behind on iOS updates. Nor what the iOS switch will mean for Telegram users running the app on a version of Apple’s mobile OS that doesn’t support Swift apps (iOS 6 or earlier). It’s not clear whether Telegram will also be entirely replacing the Android app with the Telegram X Android version (or not). Some would say it’s a big risk, but I think somebody has to take such risks and be the first to implement new technologies, such as e2e encryption - or Swift,” adds Durov.Īt the time of writing, the original Telegram iOS app and the Telegram X rebuild are both currently still available for download in the App Store. “This change will make Telegram the most popular messaging app written fully in Swift. “Since it will rely on an entirely new codebase, some minor bugs and glitches might occur, but we’ll make sure they are quickly - or should I say “swiftly” - fixed.” “As a result, Telegram will become faster, slicker and more efficient,” he writes.

In a post on his Telegram channel, founder Pavel Durov says the company will be replacing the iOS app with the Swift rebuild “within the next week or two”. Well, that maybe has now become a certainty - at least on iOS. It’s been running two versions of its app in parallel on iOS and Android during 2018 - officially announcing Telegram X in January, when it billed it as an experiment and said the alternative app “may or may not eventually replace the existing official apps”. Telegram has announced it will be migrating iOS users of its messaging app to a rebuilt-from-scratch Swift version.
