Flutter Receives Update and Achieves Significant Milestone

At today’s I/O conference, Google announced a noteworthy, albeit modest, update to Flutter, its versatile UI toolkit designed for crafting applications across mobile and desktop environments.

The company also revealed that Flutter is now the foundation for 200,000 applications available on the Google Play Store. This includes well-known applications developed by prominent organizations such as WeChat, ByteDance, BMW, Grab, and DiDi.

Notably, Google reports that one in every eight new applications submitted to the Play Store are now built using Flutter.

Flutter 2.2: Building on a Solid Foundation

The release of Flutter 2.2 arrives following the introduction of Flutter 2 in March, which initially incorporated support for both desktop and web applications. Consequently, this new version represents a relatively incremental advancement.

The update largely expands upon the functionalities introduced in version 2, with a strong emphasis on enhancing reliability and overall performance.

Key Improvements in Version 2.2

Null safety is now enabled by default for all new Flutter projects, providing enhanced protection against null reference exceptions.

Performance enhancements have been implemented across various platforms. Web applications can now leverage background caching through the use of service workers.

Android applications benefit from deferred components, while iOS applications gain support for precompiled shaders, resulting in smoother initial launches.

Google has also focused on simplifying the process of deploying Flutter applications to desktop operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Ecosystem Growth and Partnerships

A significant portion of current development efforts are centered within the Flutter ecosystem.

Google is introducing a new payment plugin for Flutter, developed in collaboration with the Google Pay team.

Furthermore, Google’s ads SDK for Flutter is receiving support for adaptive banner formats.

External collaborations are also expanding Flutter’s reach. Samsung is actively porting Flutter to Tizen, and Sony is spearheading an initiative to bring it to embedded Linux systems.

Adobe recently unveiled its XD to Flutter plugin for its design software, and Microsoft has launched an alpha version of Flutter support for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) applications on Windows 10.