JetBrains drops Swift IDE support from Kotlin Multiplatform

JetBrains is removing Swift language support from the Kotlin Multiplatform plugin. From IntelliJ IDEA 2026.3 and Android Studio Rabbit 2 | 2026.2.2, the plugin will no longer offer Swift editing, syntax highlighting or navigation inside Swift files, or between Swift and Kotlin.

What is going away, and what is staying

The change is narrower than it first looks. Running iOS applications and debugging Kotlin code on iOS remain fully supported, and Kotlin/Native features such as Swift Export and importing Swift packages into Kotlin projects are unaffected. Anyone staying on an older build of IntelliJ IDEA, Android Studio or the plugin keeps the existing Swift features, although JetBrains says those versions will receive no further updates.

Why JetBrains pulled the plug

JetBrains traces the feature back to AppCode, its discontinued iOS IDE, and says the technology was later adapted for Fleet's polyglot work and then for mixed Kotlin and Swift codebases in the Kotlin Multiplatform plugin. On adoption the company is blunt: active usage was limited and steadily declining. Its telemetry and user research found that most iOS developers on KMP projects prefer to write Swift in Xcode, while teams working mainly inside the plugin lean on Kotlin and Compose Multiplatform. Keeping tooling that inherited its architecture from AppCode compatible with continuous changes to Swift, Xcode and the IntelliJ Platform carried a substantial and permanent cost, and JetBrains says it weighed expanding Kotlin-to-Swift support instead before deciding not to continue.

Our opinion

Every multiplatform story eventually runs into the same wall: the platform you are leaving still has the better tools. Shipping Swift support inside a Kotlin IDE was an ambitious attempt to answer that from one window, and the honest reason it is ending is not engineering fashion but the blunt arithmetic of how few people reached for it. The teams hit hardest are the ones who bought into editing both languages side by side, and there is no replacement coming, because JetBrains has said plainly that it does not plan to build one. Kotlin Multiplatform's pitch, one shared codebase with platform-native interfaces where it matters, never actually depended on a Swift editor, so the product survives this without much drama. What it loses is a small but real piece of the argument that IntelliJ IDEA could be the only app you needed open.

The Kotlin team closed its post by thanking the developers who used the Swift features, singling out those who have been around since the AppCode days.