How Rust Improves Reliability And Speed In Mobile Development

Mobile development is under pressure from all sides: users want fast apps here and now, and businesses are forced to balance performance and security.

62% of companies had experienced security incidents in mobile apps in 2025, even though they were confident in the reliability of their systems.

In addition, user expectations are growing: at least 1 in 5 expect key app features to be available in 5 seconds, and if the app does not deliver such high speed, it is deleted from the device.

According to Dmitrii Kuklin, a senior software engineer with over 13 years of experience, achieving this balance is possible. He uses the Rust language as a tool that combines the reliability of system programming with the speed of native applications.

In his projects, Dmitrii uses Rust as a shared core that unites business logic across iOS, Android, and other platforms. This approach improves data security and performance while keeping native user interfaces.

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Why Rust Fits Modern Mobile Development

“Why do I choose Rust? This language was created precisely to eliminate vulnerabilities in memory management and maximize performance,” Dmitrii shares. “You can build an application using traditional mobile frameworks, but Rust makes it easier to handle the complex parts: heavy data processing, encryption, synchronization, because it controls resources efficiently without relying on a garbage collector.”

Dmitrii Kuklin has repeatedly used Rust in his projects as a shared logic core, especially when high performance and data processing reliability were required. One example is the development of AI agents with optimized multithreading that work in real time.

Rust allowed him to create a system capable of processing large amounts of data without delays and with minimal risk of errors related to memory or thread synchronization.

“For me, this greatly simplified development because it allowed combining the power of a system language with the flexibility of native mobile environments,” says Dmitrii. He managed to develop a special approach: a separate module in Rust that opens only the necessary APIs, and implements his own Sync Wrapper for synchronous calls to asynchronous operations without losing performance. This gave mobile clients on SwiftUI and Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile direct access to the logic written in Rust, without any intermediaries, ensuring a high level of application performance and security.

Real-World Use Case: Integrating Rust Into Mobile Apps

In one of Dmitrii Kuklin’s projects, Rust became the foundation for the shared security library. The MetaSecret project, a decentralized storage system for passwords and secret data with encryption, was originally created for iOS. However, the crypto audience that MetaSecret was targeting also frequently used Android.

Dmitrii joined the project at the architecture design stage and took on the work of developing mobile clients.

The engineer implemented Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile (KMM), keeping the common secure core in Rust. This allowed him to combine the performance of this language with the native SwiftUI interface for iOS and Kotlin for Android.

“To connect Rust and mobile clients, I used FFI. This mechanism helped call functions written in another language and keep consistent encryption logic across platforms,” explains Dmitrii. The engineer created a separate Rust module with a clearly defined API and a data exchange system using the JSON format. To synchronize asynchronous operations, he developed his own Sync Wrapper, which eliminates delays in calls without unnecessary overhead.

Encryption and synchronization between devices became completely autonomous and independent of servers, and the system itself remained stable even if one of the devices was lost.

Technical Insights And Best Practices

In addition to integrating Rust with Swift and Kotlin using FFI, Dmitrii began working on UniFFI, a Mozilla tool that will automatically create interfaces between Rust and mobile languages. “This method is still under development, but when it is perfected, it will allow you to write a single API for two platforms at once — Kotlin and Swift,” explains Dmitrii. According to the developer, this will simplify the application build process, help make the code more readable, and reduce the amount of manual work.

Dmitrii adheres to several recommendations for production development. First, he pays attention to memory and resource control — freeing objects immediately after FFI calls and preventing leaks through c_free_string and deleteLocalRef.

He also believes that Rust modules should be tested separately from mobile clients to identify errors faster and optimize performance.

Finally, Dmitrii Kuklin uses a single runtime for asynchronous tasks, which reduces load and increases application stability. This method has made it possible to achieve high efficiency and security when integrating Rust into mobile ecosystems and to make the architecture more predictable and scalable.

Conclusion: The Future Of Rust In Cross-Platform Development

To meet market demands and keep up with the times, mobile app developers will not have to sacrifice the quality or speed of their solutions, Dmitrii Kuklin is confident. The balance between speed and reliability can now be achieved thanks to Rust.

Dmitrii’s work on MetaSecret only confirms this. Within a single architecture, the developer has combined secure data processing, decentralization, and cross-platform compatibility, which will help improve the user experience in other similar applications in the future.

Rust’s strength lies in its ability to power the shared logic behind applications — mobile, web, or desktop — where performance and safety are critical. Dmitrii’s work demonstrates that Rust can become the core of complex, cross-platform systems, not a replacement for native development.