Flutter News | December 2024

The year is coming to an end, but the Flutter community doesn’t slow down. With the new Flutter 3.27, we get more solutions that improve the app’s performance.

Recent changes, such as the long-awaited default Impeller on Android, improved rendering on iOS, and introducing Swift Package Manager as a default plugin provider, should make the software developers’ work faster and more efficient.

Let’s see what’s particularly worth the attention.

Better graphics rendering and faster build handling on iOS

• Finally, Swift Package Manager (SPM) becomes the recommended dependency manager thanks to its improved Xcode integration, enabling faster build processing. It also means a step away from CocoaPods and easier Flutter installation. Flutter plugins are now available among other Swift packages.
• The Impeller engine has been playing a big part on iOS for a while now, but with the 3.27 version, it comes with more performance improvements, such as better handling of complex animations and graphics rendering (in the case of iOS 16).

Impeller, edge-to-edge layouts, and support for Kotlin build files on Android

• Flutter finally enters a new era on Android, replacing Skia with Impeller, a new default graphics engine. This move should make rendering smoother and faster, even for 3D animations. Impeller optimizes GPI resource usage and is more precise and stable than Skia. Using the latter can result in different performance issues, depending on the device. Making the Impeller the main engine solves this problem.
• Sometimes, we want to display edge-to-edge layouts. It used to cause difficulties in Flutter apps. Now, we get the support for Android 15 that should fix this problem. The content can be displayed in the full-screen view by default, so if your target SDK is 35 or higher, it’s necessary to support edge-to-edge layouts.
• The latest Flutter version for Android comes with support for Kotlin build files. Instead of Groovy-based Gradle scripts (build.gradle), software developers can now optionally use scripts based on Kotlin (build.gradle.kts).

Changes in widgets

In Flutter 3.27, creating UIs for iOS becomes easier thanks to new and improved Cupertino widgets.

• There’s a new API for the CupertinoNavigationBar that enables app developers to customize the placement of title and action buttons easily.
• Now, we can implement enhanced animations in iOS apps thanks to CupertinoDatePicker‘s support.
• There’s something for desktop app developers, too. SelectionArea offers support for the Shift+Click gesture, so desktop users can select some part of the text and place it in the position they chose by clicking.

Better web performance

• Flutter can now render UI updates faster thanks to optimizations of the CanvasKit and HTML renderer.
• Version 3.27 supports lazy loading of images, fonts, and other assets, so they don’t load automatically when it’s not necessary.
• The latest Flutter reveal has improved touch and mouse event handling on the web. It’s a step towards better UX.

These new and updated features should optimize your app development tasks and make your work more effective. If you have any questions regarding Flutter, let us know!