The mission is operated by Pennsylvania State University as part of NASA's Medium Explorer program (MIDEX).

The burst detection rate is 100 per year, with a sensitivity ~3 times fainter than the BATSE detector aboard the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.

[5] While originally designed for the study of gamma-ray bursts, Swift now functions as a general-purpose multi-wavelength observatory, particularly for the rapid followup and characterization of astrophysical transients of all types.

Based on continuous scans of the area of the sky with one of the instrument's monitors, Swift uses momentum wheels to autonomously slew into the direction of possible GRBs.

In the time between GRB events, Swift is available for other scientific investigations, and scientists from universities and other organizations can submit proposals for observations.

This crude position is immediately relayed to the ground, and some wide-field, rapid-slew ground-based telescopes can catch the GRB with this information.

[14] In August 2017, UVOT imaged UV emissions from gravitational wave event GW170817 detected by LIGO & Virgo detectors.

The CdZnTe detector of 5,200 cm2 (810 sq in) area, consisting of 32,500 units of 4 × 4 × 2 mm (0.157 × 0.157 × 0.079 in), can pin-point the location of sources within 1.4 arcminutes.

[17] UVOT (Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope) monitors the afterglow in ultraviolet and visible light, and locates the source at an accuracy of one arcsecond.

[4] On 4 December 2004, an anomaly occurred during instrument activation when the Thermo-Electric Cooler (TEC) Power Supply for the X-Ray Telescope did not turn on as expected.

It pointed the XRT telescope to the on-board computed coordinates and observed a bright X-ray source in the field of view.

[21] On 1 February 2005, the mission team released the first light picture of the UVOT instrument and declared Swift operational.

A software patch for two-gyroscope mode was developed, uplinked and tested in April 2024, and Swift returned to nominal operations at that point.