CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidkotlin
Andrew Ebling
Andrew Ebling

Reputation: 10283

Kotlin on Android - is there a minimum API level requirement?

I am seriously considering using Kotlin on a greenfield Android project, but am concerned about knock-on implications, the most significant of which is a minimum required API level.

On other platforms, new languages have required a certain OS version (e.g. Swift requiring iOS 7) and I wondered whether there were similar requirements here?

I've been searching through various Kotlin/Android FAQs and Stackoverflow but have not been able to find this information.

Upvotes: 27

Views: 11071

Answers (3)

Vincent Gerris
Vincent Gerris

Reputation: 7528

Kotlin when used with recent versions ( at least 2.1.0 ) and they don't even bother to document it, like here : https://kotlinlang.org/docs/kotlin-evolution-principles.html . This stinks. When trying to get a project to compile, it showed min sdk was 24 for 2.1.0. No idea where I can find which version can be used for 21, but clearly this matters.

Upvotes: 0

ArchenonPoros
ArchenonPoros

Reputation: 11

Kotlin 1.5 deprecates java 6, and only supports java 8 going forward. So if you are using Kotlin ~1.4 you will have 0 compatability issues.

Not 100% sure which API level becomes the minimum with 1.5+, maybe someone else could shed more light or correct me.

Upvotes: 1

Marcin Orlowski
Marcin Orlowski

Reputation: 75629

No. There's no such requirement for the API level as these two are not directly related. Anyway, see official FAQ

Which versions of Android does Kotlin support?

All of them! Kotlin is compatible with JDK 6, so apps with Kotlin safely run on older Android versions.

Upvotes: 36

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