Google’s Flutter development platform gets support for Windows applications

Google announces Flutter for Windows. Developers can use the UI cross-platform framework to create applications for Windows, in addition to Android, iOS, and browsers. In the coming months, Google will announce more about stable support for macOS and Linux.

The stable support for Windows is present in version 2.1 of Flutter. In addition, with this release, Google has made performance improvements and bug fixes to the user interface framework. Google announced Flutter in 2017 and the beta and stable release came out a year later. It is an open source UI framework that allows developers to build applications for Android, iOS, the web and now, with stable support, Windows from a single codebase.

Microsoft has actively contributed to support for its operating system. Contributors included the team responsible for Windows’ Fluent design elements. As with Android and iOS, the Windows implementation consists of the Dart framework and a C++ engine. The Flutter engine communicates with Windows to enable UI elements such as resizing windows or changing the dpi.

Google emphasizes that applications for the desktop are more than just mobile apps for a larger screen. For example, they should be primarily designed for keyboard and mouse use, and also plug into other operating system APIs. For example, apps developed with Flutter can communicate directly with Windows APIs from Win32, COM, and Windows Runtime through a Dart C interlayer or indirectly through a C++-written plug-in. Developers can package their final app in an installer and place it in the Microsoft Store.