After revolutionizing the mobile industry, Flutter by Google now lets you build apps for Windows as well. The IT giant has announced that Flutter is finally available for Windows web app development in alpha. This is certainly good news for the world’s leading desktop operating system that counts for approx 1 billion installations of Windows 10 alone. 

Originally, Flutter was designed for Android and iOS app development, but this recent announcement has made Flutter cover the web, MacOS, and Linux, which are currently available in various alpha or beta iterations.

As per Google- “Leveraging Google’s own Dart programming language, Flutter enables developers to build apps that feel native to each platform they run on, sharing as much code as possible to avoid duplicating efforts and “embracing differences where they exist.” 

Earlier, for designing the desktop apps, developers have had to consider unique platform-specific factors such as different screen sizes and how people interact with their devices. While smartphones usually have touch and swipe-based features, PCs and laptops have distinct options to interact like keyboards & mouse. To cover the additional inputs, Flutter has to come with this big update for the Windows app. 

Flutter Web Development- Requirements to build a Desktop Flutter App

• To create a Flutter app development with desktop support, you need the following software:
  • Flutter SDK. 
  • An IDE that supports Flutter. You can install Android Studio, IntelliJ IDEA, or Visual Studio Code and install the Flutter and Dart plugins to enable language support and tools for refactoring, running, debugging, and reloading your desktop app within an editor.
• For Windows desktop development, you need the following in addition to the Flutter SDK:
  • Visual Studio 2019 with the “Desktop development with C++” workload installed, including all of its default components.
• For macOS desktop development, you need the following in addition to the Flutter SDK:
  • Xcode
  • CocoaPods if you use plugins
• For Linux desktop development, you need the following in addition to the Flutter SDK:
  • Clang
  • CMake
  • GTK development headers
  • Ninja build
  • pkg-config
  • libblkid

Final Thoughts

With this biggest release, Flutter seeks to encourage developers to build whatever they want to build without worrying about the device they are building an app for. 

According to Google, “Flutter has been used to build more than 100,000 apps for Android on the Google Play Store alone. Offering native desktop support for Windows operating systems will further uptake its rise.”

Currently, Flutter supports Windows 7 devices and above, and as per Google, it will continue to “stabilize” Flutter for Windows in the coming months.

The news has earlier been published on the site- https://flutter.dev/desktop 

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