Flutter is known as an open-source UI software development kit (SDK) that has always amazed its users by bringing wonderful updates with thrilling features. These updates are helpful for developers to develop cross-platform apps more effectively. It is pretty obvious that Flutter has gained lots of popularity in the past few years and have chosen several times by the developers’ community to build productive apps.
At present, when businesses are always opting for something advanced and new, Google has announced Flutter’s new release 3.0 which has come up with more exciting and beneficial features. Initially, Flutter supported mobile apps only. Then, it announced the support of Windows about three months before, and now, it is releasing an update that supports macOS and Linux systems as well.
Initially, Flutter started as a cross-platform, open-source UI development framework but now it has become the most preferred and programmer-friendly toolkit to develop apps for different platforms. Flutter has always surprised its users by providing them with back-to-back releases and this latest Flutter update is all set and outfitted with the exhilarating support to increase productivity.
Well, there is still a lot to know about Flutter’s latest release. In this article, we are going to get an understanding of all the new features & upgrades involved in Flutter 3.0. Keep scrolling to head towards exploring the details.
Table of Contents
Overview of Flutter
Flutter known as Google’s SDK has been used for building world-class applications for different platforms with a single codebase. Flutter 1.0 got released in back 2018 and since then Flutter has been inoculated with useful features & functionalities providing Flutter app developers several benefits with every release. Some of its significant releases are:
- Flutter 1.12- Dec 2019
- Flutter 1.17- May 2020
- Flutter 1.20- Aug 2020
- Flutter 2.0- Mar 2021
- Flutter 2.2- May 2021
- Flutter 2.5- Sep 2021
- Flutter 2.8- Dec 2021
- Flutter 2.10- Feb 2022
Till now, Flutter has empowered various apps and games such as eBay Motors, Google Pay, and more. Flutter has not only used to build iPhone, Android, and iPad apps but it is also used to create high-quality desktop apps. Flutter enables everyone to reap the benefits either through creating packages empowering the core framework, contributing code, tutorials, scripting things, and so on.
Read Also: How Much Does Flutter App Development Cost?
Insights of Flutter’s Journey So Far!
The main purpose behind the release of Google Flutter was to modernize the application development sector. Flutter has strengthened various segments, be it unifying the iterative web development model with the hardware augmented graphics render or pixel-level control used for game security.
Since the launch of Flutter 1.0 beta, this framework has come a long way by adding new frame facilities and widgets with every version. It has also included fundamental platforms’ integration, a library full of packages and tools, and performance improvements. Whenever it comes to cross-platform app development, there is no other framework that is better than Flutter. Currently, the market is full of applications created with Flutter in different domains, from companion apps such as My BMW to social welfare apps like Crowdsource.
Based on a survey conducted in 2021, there are 42% of software developers use Flutter. It is founded that only one-third of the developers’ community use cross-platform frameworks or technologies, the remaining using native tools.
What’s New in Flutter 3.0 Release?
Flutter 3.0 update has been released on May 11, 2022, to provide Flutter developers the facility of creating native interfaces for six different platforms using a single codebase. This new update is leading to giving the developers unmatched throughput and providing start-ups to implement new ideas to the fully accessible market.
It is time for businesses to hire mobile app developers with Flutter expertise as this framework has hit the market with several different updates to announce for cross-platform app development. These updates comprise Flutter’s stable support for Linux and macOS, must-needed performance improvements, and other web and mobile updates.
If you’re looking to hire a skilled Flutter developer for your upcoming mobile project, check out Toptal’s highly-rated platform. Toptal connects experienced developers with CEOs, CTOs, and management at prominent firms and startups. By collaborating with Toptal’s Flutter freelancers, businesses can augment their development teams and achieve their objectives in areas like mobile, web, and other software development projects.
Further, we have also got to know about some drop-offs to support the Windows’ older versions including some breaking variations. Let’s jump onto the details:
For Mobile
Flutter’s new update has a lot to do with the mobile app development services. Now, it is easy for Flutter developers to provide a compelling and smoother experience to mobile users. Here are the updates for mobile:
Foldable Mobile Support
New integrated features and widgets in Flutter’s new release facilitate developers to provide lively experiences with foldable devices. It became possible due to the cooperation led by Microsoft. As a part, MediaQuery comprises a lot of DisplayFeatures to depict the states and bounds of device aspects. DisplayFeatureSubScreen widget has also integrated itself with the default dialogs & pop-ups of the framework leading to making Flutter responsive and aware of these aspects.
Easy iOS Releases & Support for Refresh Rate
The iOS app release has been made easier by incorporating new selections to the IPA command built by the Flutter. Alongside, Flutter 3.0 will also support variable refresh rates including ProMotion displays on iOS devices such as iPhone 13 Pro and iPad Pro. Previously, iPhone devices had a refresh rate of 60 Hz that has now reached 120 Hz. It is helpful to provide users with a better experience at the time of animations.
Sunsetting 32-bit iOS/iOS 9/iOS 10
It has been already announced with the Google Flutter 2.10 stable release in February 2022 that Flutter is taking back the support provided to 32-bit iOS devices and iOS 9 and 10 versions. This drastic change has a big impact on iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 & 5C along with the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation iPad devices. This latest release Flutter 3.0 is happened to be the last stable release that will back these iOS devices and different versions.
Update About Gradle Version
It can be noted that all the created files during the Flutter app development services have the newest version of Gradle and Android Gradle Plugins. If developers are having any current projects going on, they need to have versions 7.4 for Gradle and 7.1.2 for the Android Gradle Plugins manually.
For Web Applications
Your chosen Flutter app development company can use the below-mentioned updates for web app development. These updates contain the following:
Casual Game Toolkit
Most of the developers take Flutter as an app framework only but it is having a vast community for casual game development reaping the benefits of hardware-accelerated graphics support. Flutter is providing open-source game engines such as Flame. The all-new Flutter Casual Games Toolkit also consists of best practices, tutorials, source code, and a demo pinball game based on the Flutter theme to make the game development easier.
Web App Lifecycles
Flutter web applications are going to have a new lifecycle API that provides the capacity to take the command of monitoring the app’s bootstrapping procedure from the hosting HTML page. It is also advantageous for Lighthouse to identify the app’s capabilities and performance. It can be used in various use cases such as a splash screen, plain HTML interactive landing page, and a loading indicator.
Image Decoding
The latest update of Flutter has enabled the web to distinguish automatically, and it also uses the ImageDecoder API in browsers that backed it. If we talk about today, almost all Chromium-based browsers including Edge, Chrome, Opera, Samsung Browser, and so on have already included the API. This API uses the browser’s build-up image codecs for image decoding asynchronously off the prime thread. It results in fasting up the image decoding, main thread’s unblocking, and deleting all the junk files created by previous images.
Performance Improvements
Partial repaint has been activated on Android devices with the help of open-source contributor knop. Further, the performance of opacity animations has also been improved for some of the basic case scenarios. Flutter 3.0 has also introduced a method helpful for estimating the complexity of rendering images as per the cost of drawing operations.
Additionally, it is used as a mechanism to alleviate memory usage without hindering the performance of the Flutter app.
For Desktop
Flutter’s new release 3.0 has also provided support for macOS and Linux desktops. Here are more of them:
Support for macOS System Menu Bar and Cascading Menu
With the latest release of Flutter, now it is possible to build menu bars on the macOS system via using platforMenuBar Widget. It is used to insert the platform-only menus and provides control over the activities conducted in the macOS app’s menus. Flutter has also provided support to Intel and Apple Silicon with Universal Binary to ensure providing a smoother experience on macOS as well.
Access to Different Desktop Platforms
As we have stated that Flutter 3.0 has provided support for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It comes with access to different services like accessible navigation, screen-readers, and inverted colors.
Universal Binaries
Google Flutter 3.0 has provided support to Apple Silicon and Intel with the integration of Universal Binary to make sure Flutter delivers a native-like experience on macOS as well.
Disapproved Windows 7/8 Development
In the latest Flutter update, we are introducing the proposed Windows version for Windows 10 development. From now onwards, there are some older Windows versions such as Windows 7, Windows 8, & Windows 8.1 that will get no support from Microsoft with only required testing. There will be provided consistent support for previous versions, and these can be upgraded.
Other Updates
Here are some other updates of Flutter 3.0
1. Dart 2.17
Your chosen Flutter app development company now can use a new version of Dart, known as Dart SDK 2.17 including additional features and upgrades. It has also comprised the basic themes of platform portability and productivity of the Flutter. Other aspects such as new language features incorporating Enums with the support of members, better parameters, and flexibility. This version has also come up with improved tools consisting of lint packages. Lint packages act as a tool that provides support for Dart code checking against Flutter’s best practices. And there has been a new update of basic library API documentation including vast code samples.
Flutter 3.0 has got new templates to integrate dart:ffi (native C interop) with Flutter plugins, support for macOS signing, Windows executables, and tentative support for RISC-V processors.
2. Firebase Support
Flutter 3.0 with stable Firebase support for desktop, mobile, and web development has made it more worthwhile. There is always required a fine set of tools to back the developers while operating, developing, and launching the Flutter app. It has also included services like authentication, data storage, device testing, and cloud functions. Whereas Flutter needs to have different third-party integrations that are AWS Amplify, Sentry, AppWrite, and Firebase. Here Firebase is a back-end platform of Google used to create efficient mobile and web apps.
The new update has an integrated Flutter Crashlytics plugin that helps to track the real-time fatal bugs. This plugin uses the same features as before to do the error-finding through the popular real-time crash reporting service of Firebase. These features are comprised of critical alerting metrics (crash-free users) to help you with the app stability. Crashlytics is helpful in easy to select, triage, and fixing problems along with improving the Flutter crashes’ clustering.
3. Material 3 Support
Google Flutter 3.0’s release is here to back the Material Design 3 known as the Material design’s current design system. In Flutter 3, it contains ‘Material You’ with features such as an improved color system, dynamic color, typography, and others. Android 12 includes new visual effects such as a new touch ripple design, stretch over scroll effect, etc. While in Flutter 3.0, app developers can have a flexible cross-platform design system with dynamic colors and the latest visual aspects.
Final Words
We hope the above article has succeeded to provide you with all the knowledge about what’s new in Flutter 3.0. For the future, we always expect the same from Flutter that it should keep continuing to surprise the developers’ community with useful and most effective updates more often. All these updates and improvements comprised in the latest update 3.0 seem helpful to build productive, fast-performing, and world-class cross-platform applications.
When it comes to developing a high-quality app for multiple platforms with a native-like experience, there is no better option than using Flutter. SemiDot Infotech has also been working in this field for years and has expert Flutter app developers with a sublime experience. Feel free to contact us if you have something in your mind to get developed with Flutter.
