Not rewriting the whole OS, of course, but using the language going forward Matthew Hughes Wed 7 Apr 2021 // 12:38 UTC Share Copy Google has signalled support for the Rust programming language in low-level system code to limit the prevalence of memory-based security vulnerabilities. The Android project has largely been built in two languages. Java (and more recently, JVM-compatible languages like Kotlin) have been favoured for higher-level parts of the operating system, such as the UI. OS fundamentals, like the kernel and drivers, have typically been written in C, and, to a lesser extent, C++. C and even C++ are considered well suited for system-level programming as they offer a degree of closeness to the underlying hardware that's hard to achieve with higher-level languages. There are no intermediate layers of abstraction, like the Java virtual machine. C is also highly portable, and developers are left to their own devices when it comes to things like memory handling.