August 15, 2025
Mobile developers now have native authentication solutions that eliminate the complexity of building custom auth flows.
This week brings an exciting special announcement featuring two major updates that fundamentally change how you implement authentication in mobile apps: prebuilt iOS components and the Android SDK Beta.
Prebuilt iOS Components
Clerk is known for providing beautifully designed drop-in UI components when building web applications. We've brought the same great developer experience to building iOS apps. You can now implement complete auth flows with just a few lines of SwiftUI code!
The new components handle the entire authentication lifecycle: multi-factor authentication, social sign-in, password reset, and comprehensive user profile management. Most importantly, they automatically conform to iOS design standards and support both light and dark mode without additional configuration.
AuthView provides a comprehensive authentication experience with both sign-in and sign-up flows. This component can be placed within a sheet or used directly within your view. For example, the following snippet checks if a user is signed in and presents the AuthView() in a sheet if they are not:
The result is an authentication view that conforms to iOS standards, dynamically built based on your specific Clerk configuration:
UserButton displays the current user's profile image. Perfect for applications with a toolbar:
Tapping this profile image opens the UserProfileView:
The UserProfileView can also be placed in your existing code, providing a way for you to surface it from other triggers:
Customization Without Compromise
In addition to these components, the new theming system provides granular control over appearance while maintaining functionality. You can customize various design elements so the components match the aesthetic of your application while still utilizing Clerk's excellent user management experience.
Android SDK Beta
Android developers now have access to the Clerk Android SDK.
This SDK is a toolkit designed to integrate Clerk's authentication and user management services with applications made for the Android ecosystem. Built with Kotlin, the SDK adheres to modern standards, delivering the idiomatic and consistent developer experience you expect from Clerk.
Built for Jetpack Compose, the SDK uses declarative UI patterns with automatic state management:
The SDK also leverages coroutines for clean, readable authentication code:
This enables you to implement social sign-in with a single function call:
Session state is managed for you automatically, so you can focus on building your app features:
Beta to GA Roadmap
The current beta supports building fully custom sign-up and sign-in flows, social OAuth authentication, and session management. Features like prebuilt components, organizations, and magic links are not yet implemented but are actively being developed for the GA release.
As an official Clerk SDK, you can expect responsive support even while in beta. Your feedback is critical during this testing period to ensure Clerk Android becomes the best it can be. The full SDK is available on GitHub, and the development team is actively engaging with the community through the Clerk Discord server.
Please note that the API will likely undergo breaking changes until the 1.0.0 release, as we incorporate developer feedback and finalize the interface design.
Platform-Native Development
Both SDKs prioritize native development patterns over cross-platform abstractions. iOS components leverage SwiftUI's declarative syntax, while the Android SDK embraces Jetpack Compose and Kotlin coroutines. This means authentication code feels natural within each platform's ecosystem.
The result is significantly reduced development time without sacrificing the performance benefits of native development. You get enterprise-grade authentication that scales with your app's growth while maintaining the developer experience you expect from Clerk.
Get started with the iOS quickstart guide or explore the Android SDK Beta documentation. Both implementations support seamless integration with existing Clerk infrastructure, so you can add mobile authentication to your current setup without architectural changes.
For developers considering different approaches to mobile authentication, our guide on using Clerk with React Native provides valuable insights into cross-platform development patterns and how they compare to native implementations.