Flutter
Google's UI toolkit for building natively compiled applications for mobile, web and desktop from a single codebase.
- Actively maintained
- Well documented
- Permissive license
Overview
Flutter is Google's open-source SDK for building natively compiled apps for mobile, web, and desktop from a single Dart codebase. Rather than wrapping native platform widgets, it ships its own rendering engine (built on Skia and Impeller) and a full widget catalog - including both Material and Cupertino-style widgets - so an app's visual design isn't limited by what each platform provides.
Development is built around stateful hot reload, which applies code changes to a running app instantly without losing app state, and the tooling includes editor plugins for VS Code and IntelliJ/Android Studio plus tens of thousands of community packages. Native interoperability is supported through FFI and platform channels when you need to call into existing platform-specific code.
Flutter targets teams that want one codebase and consistent, pixel-precise UI across iOS, Android, web, and desktop (Windows, macOS, Linux), or that want to embed it as the UI toolkit for a custom device platform.
Why it's in this catalog
Catalog rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)
One of the two dominant cross-platform mobile frameworks; essential pick for a thin mobile category.
- Foundational
- Vendor-backed
- Categories
- Mobile
- Languages
- Dart, C++
- License
- BSD-3-Clause
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