Desktop Flutter Example

October 5, 2021 Desktop, Desktop App, Flutter Desktop

This is the standard Flutter template application, modified to run on desktop.

The linux, macos, and windows directories serve as early prototypes of what will eventually become the flutter create templates for desktop, and will be evolving over time to better reflect that goal.

Building and Running

See the main project README.

Dart Differences from Flutter Template

The main.dart and pubspec.yaml have minor changes to support desktop:

debugDefaultTargetPlatformOverride is set to avoid ‘Unknown platform’ exceptions.
The font is explicitly set to Roboto, and Roboto is bundled via pubspec.yaml, to ensure that text displays on all platforms.

See the Flutter Application Requirements section of the Flutter page on desktop support for more information.

Adapting for Another Project

Since flutter create is not yet supported for desktop, the easiest way to try out desktop support with an existing Flutter application is to start from this example. Two different approaches are described below.

With either approach, be sure to read the Flutter page on desktop support, especially the Flutter Application Requirements section.

Copy the ‘linux’, ‘macos’, and/or ‘windows’ Directories

These directories are self-contained, and can be copied to an existing Flutter project, enabling flutter run for those platforms.

Be aware that neither the API surface of the Flutter desktop libraries nor the interaction between the flutter tool and the platform directories is stable, and no attempt will be made to provide supported migration paths as things change. If you use this approach, you should expect that every time you update Flutter you may have to delete your copies of the platform directories and re-copy them from an updated version of flutter-desktop-embedding.

Replace Flutter Components

Since this example already supports running on desktop platforms, you can swap in your project’s Dart code, pubspec.yaml, resources, etc.

This will be the easiest approach to keep working as desktop support evolves, but requires that you develop your project in a flutter-desktop-embedding fork.