Flutter News Update | May 2024
If you wonder what’s new in the Flutter world, we’re here to tell you about the latest updates.
Frankly, there’s so much going on that we’ve selected some novelties that we find especially important. We hope you’ll find them as interesting as we do.
Better app performance with Wasm and Vulkan
At the recent Google I/O 2024 conference, Flutter 3.22 was introduced. In a nutshell, new changes mean better performance for web and mobile apps.
If you develop web solutions, get familiar with Wasm (WebAssembly). It is a binary instruction format that makes using web apps an almost native experience.
WebAssembly was designed as a compiled language, while JavaScript is an interpreted language that usually needs an additional compilation layer. As a result, Wasm makes the browsers much more powerful and enables you to provide better UX.
Apart from this, there are several Impeller engine updates that improve app performance:
- Vulkan backend for Android reduces loading time and makes the app more efficient. With Vulkan support, all BlurStyles are available, and you can easily implement advanced blends or custom fragment shaders.
- Blur has returned in a slightly different version that reduces the CPU and GPU time of blurs on Android and iOS, so even apps with lots of animations won’t strain the device’s battery too much.
Breaking changes
With the release of the next Flutter version, we got a new set of guides that help us manage issues that may come up as a result of breaking changes in the latest release (e.g., dropping support for Android KitKat). They can significantly impact how the app works, so it’s best to be up-to-date with changes before migrating to a new release.
More big companies choose Flutter
If you still need help convincing others to develop their projects with Flutter, tell them that more and more renowned enterprises opt for this cross-platform technology. As Michael Thompson writes in his article about Flutter 3.22 and Dart 3.4, even such companies as Universal Studios Destinations & Expectations, LG, or Canonical choose Flutter.
Find more examples of Flutter apps in our article.
New opportunities in DevTools
In DevTools, you can now find new options that facilitate debugging and app testing.
With DevTools’ validator and its new features, setting up deep links in apps is easier. While working on Android apps, you can use it to check web configuration and quickly detect issues.
And the winner is… game development
In our latest blog post about Flutter, we’ve mentioned the Global Gamers Challenge, a competition dedicated to Flutter game developers. We finally know the winners. You can see them in a video on the official Flutter channel. Check these games out, get inspired, and above all, have fun!
