How to Build a Flutter Desktop App: Tutorial With Example
Published: 2024-05-03 07:59:58


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/n8xqgou8zjyjeakqetly.jpg)Do you want to find how to build the flutter desktop app? Then check out this guide and know everything about building the flutter desktop app with the best example. In general, developers can write various different types of applications such as mobile applications, console applications, desktop applications and [web applications](https://flutteragency.com/services/flutter-web-app-development/). 

Desktop applications run around the system window with many user interface elements. When you are going to make the desktop application, there are more different frameworks, programming languages and UI-toolkits to choose from. 

There are around two types of desktop application development APIs such as cross-platform and platform-specific. The platform-specific APIs support only the targeted OS. For instance, Cocoa API offers interfaces to develop various desktop apps for the macOS platform.

The cross-platform APIs enable developers to make various desktop applications for multiple OS with the single generic API. The cross platform gains more popularity than platform specific due to many reasons. For instance, developers can easily maintain the single codebase for the multiple platforms since the cross-platform framework’s API offers the better abstraction for platform-specific APIs.

The cross-platform development frameworks also allow rapid feature delivery. There is no requirement to implement the similar feature for different OS by writing the platform-specific code, and hence new features can be efficiently delivered. 

Here you can find how to build the native cross-platform desktop applications with Flutter. You can [hire flutter developer from Flutter Agency](https://flutteragency.com/hire-flutter-developer/) to make everything possible without fail.

**What is Flutter?**
In general, flutter is the cross-platform application development framework that can be used to build the natively compiled applications for various platforms like web, mobile and desktop. The supported output targets are iOS, Android, HTML Canvas, HTML, Windows, Canvas, Fushia and macOS. 

Flutter is making use of Dart as an application development language. It mainly concentrates more on developing mobile apps, but supports the desktop versions too. Such a framework comes with its own widget toolkit. When the Flutter application is launched, it can render the UI controls of the application through the Skia graphics library.

**What is the reason for Flutter’s popularity?**
The most critical problem in the cross-platform framework development field is the way of placing abstraction layers for various platforms. You can also know how to offer the generic API for professional developers without creating any performance problem for such applications. 

Flutter provides cross-platform, simple APIs through Dart libraries while maintaining better performance. If you need some help, then you can hire flutter developer.

**Developing the desktop application with Flutter:**
Here you can explore how to develop the cross-platform desktop application with Flutter.

As Flutter is stable for Windows and Linux OS, it is best to consider how to get started on this OS before creating the desktop app that can work on any of such three environments. If you need some help, then you can hire flutter developer.

**Setting up the Flutter on Windows:**

Setting up the flutter development environment on Windows OS is very simple. Simply you need to download the Flutter app package, then extract it and add it to the system’s PATH variable. To make it possible:

- You have to open the start menu

- Type in “env” out there

- Then choose “Edit the system environment variables” option from the available list

- After that, click the “Environment Variables…” option

- From “User variables for username” section, you have to double-click on the “Path” entry

- Next you have to add the path from where you have extracted flutter 
After that, you can open up the command prompt and then run the flutter doctor to check whether the configuration process is completed or not. If you need some help, then you can hire flutter developer.

**Setting up the Flutter on Ubuntu:**
Setting up the flutterd evelopment environment on Ubuntu is also very simple when it is about entering certain terminal commands. 

Use the below mentioned command to install the flutter SDK

$ sudo snap install flutter –classic

**Validating the Flutter environment:**
When the desktop mode is enabled, then the flutter devices command will list down the current OS. If you need some help, then you can hire a flutter developer.

**Creating the new Flutter app:**
You have to create the new application with a create command like other typical CLI.

$ flutter create desktop-app

The above command can scaffold the easy starter project. The starter project consists of minimal code with comments to help understand how the flutter works effectively. 

The lib/main.dart file consists of the source code of the application. 

After editing the major soruce file, you have to enter the below mentioned command to run the application:

$ flutter run -d <platform>

// <platform> = windows, linux, macos

The above mentioned command will open the flutter app in the native window. The native window can be styled based on the current OS and system theme configuration. If you need some help, then you can hire flutter developer.

**Debugging the Flutter app:**
The flutter desktop application development environment supports the most advanced reloading feature. Hence, you have to click r key in the console to enter the flutter run command and trigger the hot reloading. You can change the text widget’s content when the app is running in the debug mode. If you need some help, then you can hire flutter developer. Know all about how to debug or print in flutter web.

**How to release the application?**
There are many different ways to release the flutter applications, but the deployment method is based on the type of OS. For instance, when you are going to release the desktop application for the Linux users, you can deploy the flutter application to Snapcraft software store.

When you need to deploy the application for the Windows users, you can make the new Windows app package (MSIX) or Windows Installer Package (MSI)with the help of a third party tool. 

Flutter for macOS, Windows and Linux can be stable, hence you can produce the production apps this way. If you need some help, then you can hire a flutter developer.