Google Flutter 2.10 Has Got Good News For Windows Developers

So, Flutter’s first release of the new year has arrived with stable support for windows, and everyone is going crazy. Under the hood of announcing Flutter for Windows, Google has wrapped up many performance improvements, iOS, as well as Android updates. Though the center of attraction in Google Flutter 2.10 remains support for creating windows native apps.

We are delighted to see Flutter adding support for creating a native experience for various platforms from a single codebase. Though Flutter support for Linux, Windows, and macOS is still in beta. But Google’s cross-platform SDK has come a very long way, closing 1,843 issues and merging 1,525 PRs within two months from the last release.

Are you excited to see what Flutter 2.10 has more to offer? Then, let us dive right into Flutter 2.10 hot highlights.

All about Windows and Flutter

As Flutter support for Windows is now stable, developers don’t need to flip a flag to get the functionality. It’s now available by default! In addition, Flutter 2.10 brings an abundance of improvements for text handling, keyboard handling, and keyboard shortcuts. Moreover, new integrations directly into Windows with support for command-line arguments are also added.

Flutter for Windows contains three main layers if we see from an architectural standpoint:

1. the high-level Dart framework to provide gesture support, animations, widgets, and so on; 
2. an intermediate Flutter engine, written using C++ that incorporates the Dart runtime and Skia graphics engine; 
3. a lower-level C++ layer for translating and dispatching Windows messages.

Above all, there are packages like  fluent_ui and flutter_acrylic to create a Windows app with Microsoft Fluent design system. Overall, Flutter empowers you to create production-ready Windows applications from now onwards.

Read more on Flutter and Windows duo.

Android update

Among numerous Android improvements in Flutter 2.10, some crucial ones are:

• Flutter 2.10 enabled multi-dex support automatically, eliminating the pain of allowing multi-deck support and importing the libraries manually.
• Default support for the latest version of Android when creating a new app;
• Flutter will suggest resolution steps to common issues with “Flutter Fix”;

iOS update

Flutter 2.10 brings some platform-specific features and enhancements for iOS:

• In the enhancement of keyboard animation in iOS made smoother;
• Improved camera plugin stability;
• Compressed pointers added to reduce memory usage in 64-bit iOS architecture;

Web update

Not many, but Flutter 2.10 brings a couple of optimizations for Web.

• Flutter 2.10 improves scrolling multiline text field on the web by introducing edge scrolling for text selection for both desktop and web apps: 
• An overlay has been needed to add a native HTML element that comes with overhead. So in Flutter 2.10, they have released a new “non-painting platform view” that will remove all that overhead;

Material 3

Google’s Flutter 2.10 has begun to transit to Material 3.

• The new colorSchemeSeed option is added to the ThemeData factory constructor to create entire color palettes for the app using a single color seed; the same Android 12 tunes its apps depending on the colors in the wallpaper.
• ThemeData use Material 3 that migrates components to the new Material 3 look;
• Plus, 1028 new Material icons to make apps more expressive.

Flutter DevTools

Similar to previous updates, they have worked on Flutter DevTools in Flutter 2.10 release as well. 

• Now we can use dart devtools instead of pub global activate to download and execute the latest version of DevTools from the command line with the version of Flutter that you’re using.
• Support for inspecting large lists and maps in the Debugger panel is also improved along with other usability updates.

Visual Studio Code

There is a number of enhancements in Flutter’s VS Code extension, including more color previews in the code with color picker, updating the code automatically;

Dart 2.16

Dart SDK version 2.16 was released alongside Flutter 2.10. Though it doesn’t have any new language-specific features, it has enhanced support for specifying the platforms that Dart packages support, several bug fixes, and a new search UI for pub.dev.

Conclusion

Google’s open-source, cross-platform SDK takes big steps with every new release. With stable Windows support, developers can bring their experiences to create beautiful windows apps. On the other hand, with Flutter app development, startups can start and scale their business journey faster and more successfully.