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You don’t manually edit the generated Kotlin. You change the Swift. And if there are things you can't or don't want to do in Swift, there are mechanisms for writing Kotlin inline in your Swift, dropping Kotlin files into the project, and other platform customization options: https://skip.tools/docs/platformcustomization/
Nothing non-standard about it, and you can certainly convert existing code. But if you want to convert an app - as opposed to a framework - you should start with our template and move your code over. The Xcode app project file format is opaque, making it very hard to migrate, and we rely on it being set up in a certain way to be able to build for Android
Most Android apps also now include an on-screen back arrow similar to iOS's standard. Designs have converged a lot... probably due to big companies wanting to unify the designs of their iOS and Android apps as much as possible for simplicity.
That said, yes, you can easily use #if blocks to write iOS and Android-specific code: https://skip.tools/docs/platformcustomization/
Super happy this worked out for you! But I could never trust an LLM to maintain my app over time
Being able to share any parts of your business logic and UI that you want between iOS and Android versions is a huge win for companies of any size. Traditionally this has been a PITA, has added significant performance overhead and bloat (JS runtime, added garbage collector, etc depending on the framework), and on the UI side, has often given you non-native UIs. Skip solves all of these problems, and because it uses your code as-is on iOS and generates native code on Android, you can trivially and directly mix in platform-specific code wherever you need to, without any bridging.
Skip generates native code, so you can open it in Android Studio and use all the native debugging tools
- The LGPL license for Skip's libraries is the same license used in projects like WebKit. It does not interfere with using Skip in commercial, closed-source apps.
- Skip is based on Swift Package Manager and fully both dual-platform and iOS and Android-specific dependencies.
- Skip has a suite of dual-platform libraries, and for anything that isn't covered, multiple techniques for integrating platform-specific code and libraries. These include being able to use Kotlin right inline with your Swift and mix Compose code in with your SwiftUI.
Skip isn't a minimum denominator framework. With Skip, you write normal iOS code. So you legitimately make zero sacrifices to your iOS app.
Now of course Skip can't have complete Android coverage for every iOS framework - far from it. So if you use something on the iOS side that has no Android coverage, you have to create a separate code path for Android, where typically you'll utilize an equivalent Android framework/function. Skip has several mechanisms for integrating Android code, including being able to call Kotlin and Java API directly from your Swift. These mechanisms are also how you can differentiate parts of your Android app as desired, and how we create our own cross-platform libraries.
Skip translates your SwiftUI into Compose, so it uses your Material theme just like any other native Compose app would
Skip is a locally installed and run dev tool. It is infinitely scalable! :)
Material 3
To answer the other part of your question: you don’t manually edit the generated Kotlin. Instead there are mechanisms for writing Kotlin inline in your Swift, dropping Kotlin files into the project, and other platform customization options: https://skip.tools/docs/platformcustomization/
Skip is definitely a great way to ease into the Android dev world.
Lots of options for adding platform-specific code - including being able to directly call Kotlin/Java APIs from your Swift, move back and forth between SwiftUI and Compose, etc.
Yes, the docs even say that integrating into an existing app is way harder than starting with a new one!
https://skip.tools/docs/gettingstarted/#existing_development