Google’s Flutter SDK Adds Support for Windows App Development

Google on Wednesday announced a major update for Flutter — the tech giant’s open-source framework for native app development across multiple platforms, that adds support for Windows apps.

Flutter was launched in 2018 to make it possible for developers to build natively compiled applications for several platforms at once, all from a single codebase instead of having to use different software development kits (SDKs) for each target.

Flutter launched with support for Android and iOS, eventually adding web, macOS, and Linux to the fray as well.

With version 2.10, Flutter adds stable support for Windows app development.

Today marks a significant expansion of this vision with the first production release of support for Windows as an app target, enabling Windows developers to benefit from the same productivity and power that mobile developers have been enjoying.

Google noted that developing apps for desktops and PCs can be wildly different than making mobile apps, especially with the bigger, wider screens, more input methods, and more expansive API support.

That being the case, Google had to extensively fine-tune Flutter for Windows and got a helping hand from Microsoft in the endeavour.

“We’re delighted to see Flutter adding support for creating Windows apps. Windows is an open platform, and we welcome all developers. We’re excited to see Flutter developers bring their experiences to Windows and also publish to the Microsoft Store,” said Kevin Gallo, Corporate Vice President of the Windows Developer Platform at Microsoft.

“Flutter support for Windows is a big step for the community, and we can’t wait to see what you’ll bring to Windows!”

Flutter handles Windows apps similarly to how it deals with Android and iOS apps, combining a Dart framework and C++ engine to support the implementation.

Citing data from analysts like Statista and SlashData, Google said that Flutter was the most popular cross-platform UI toolkit in 2021. According to Google, nearly 500,000 apps that use Flutter have been released so far, including software from companies like Betterment, BMW, and ByteDance, as well as apps from 30 different teams at Google.