Are you happy with the release of the Flutter 3.7 features update? The Flutter community got new exciting and valuable Flutter features this year. With more custom menu bars, cascading menu features, several new debugging tools, and much more. In other words, the new updates in features of Flutter include new exciting upgrades and improvements in existing features. Let’s not forget Impeller rendering tools, sharing resources across different platforms, and other development & UI tool updates. Overall, the beginning of 2023 brought many amazing developments and improvements for the Flutter community and made Flutter app solutions more futuristic. Now, we can expect a Flutter app development company to offer much more futuristic and advanced Flutter app development solutions to build smart mobile applications.

Latest Updates Every Developer Must Look Out For in Flutter 3.7 Features

Indeed, new updates have only enhanced the performance and made the Flutter app development much easier and faster. Let’s look at the significant upgrades that attracted the attention of global developers-

Enhanced Support for Material Design 3

By allowing the use of Material 3 design, Flutter app developers can now make the app content bold and definite. It is now available for both Android and iOS operating systems. Material library in the Flutter framework allows users to use building blogs your app UI requires. Since the release, the developers in Google have been updating the Material library. Hence, it is helping developers to build more fascinating and accessible apps across all platforms, such as Windows, iOS, Android, etc.

For example, new Flutter 3.7 features update in the Material 3 library allow developers to choose a color theme from a single seed color. Thus, developers get a harmonious color scheme for the entire app with the help of new updates. The widgets that got their place with the latest updates are Badge, BottomAppBar, Filled & Filled Tonal buttons, SegmentedButton, Checkbox, Divider, Menus, Slider, SnackBar, TabBar, Banner, and many more widgets.

Impeller Preview

When it comes to handling the early on-set jank in the Flutter app development framework, the New advanced Impeller works as a blessing for the developers. This new impeller works as a new rendering runtime engine for Flutter and pre-compiles smaller and simpler sets of shaders. To take full advantage of the potential of hardware-driven graphics APIs, Metal on iOS and Vulkan on Android, this new impeller helps developers significantly. As a result, the flutter mobile applications exhibit faultless animations and smooth transitions.

Let’s look at other aids Impeller provides-

Performance: Shader compilation and reflection are performed offline while app pipeline state objects are built in advance. The Flutter engine has control over catching. Thus, the impeller has predictable and reliable performance characteristics.

Measurable: Graphics resources, such as buffers, pipeline state objects, textures, etc., all have labels and tags. Animation recording and storage are possible without risking the performance of real-time rendering.

Adaptable: Impeller is not limited to a specific client rendering API. Developers are required to write the shaders once and then, can be used as backend format during the Flutter app development according to requirements.

Use Full Potential of Modern Graphics APIs: Impeller helps developers to use features offered by modern graphics APIs, such as Metal and Vulkan effectively.

Use of Concurrency Efficiently: Concurrent operations are capable of dispensing single-frame tasks across multiple threads whenever the requirement arises.

Validation Support in iOS

Previously, developers were required to update several settings before submitting their Flutter-based iOS app to the App Store. With the release of the IPA command in the Flutter framework, several settings are set in advance. Developers can either make changes during the iOS app development process if necessary or submit the app to the App Store directly. It saves the developers time significantly and makes the process fast.

This new Flutter 3/7 features update is quite helpful for novice iOS Flutter app developers. It is possible that some of the developers are not aware of the App Store requirements before releasing the Flutter app. Hence, the new validation feature ensures that the app meets all requirements and helps developers to complete the process without any hassle.

Menu Bar Creation and Cascading Menus

Developers now can use menu bar widgets and cascading menus widgets to define the material design menu. They can also use another widget option called MenuAnchor for the creation of standalone cascading menus. The best thing about such widgets among other features ofFlutter framework compared to others is that they are customizable and easy to use.

Other customizable widgets, such as MenuItemButton and SubmenuBotton are also used. With such new updates, the Flutter app development process has become far easier and faster. Now, developers can develop faster solutions to complex app ideas. As a result, you will get a highly interactive and user-friendly flutter app development solution.

Flutter Version 3.7 DevTools Upgrades

To resolve debugging processing issues and make the debugging process easier, Google has transformed and updated DevTools. Three new features got added, called Profile, Trace, and Diff. These new feature tabs support the previous memory debugging features and exhibit more easiness. Developers can access detailed information about these features as they are documented on docs.flutter.dev.

New features have improved the current memory allocation analysis a lot. Now, developers can know about class and memory type, investigate the code paths that allocate memory at runtime for a set of classes, and understand memory management using diff memory snapshots. In addition, the Flutter community received some important bug fixes and improvements, such as Network Profiler and the CPU profiler.

Customization of Context Menus

Whether the Flutter app development solution requires the creation of new context menus anywhere in the application or customization of built-in context menus, the latest Flutter upgrades got your back.

For example, developers can add the “add email” button for users to see when they select the email address or create an image widget to display the “save” button when clicked right or after long-pressing the image. Further, ContextMenuController is useful to showcase the current platform’s custom menu anywhere in the app, displaying the flexibility of the widget over context menus.

New Updates to Scrolling

The introduction of new scrolling physics is extremely beneficial to MacOS apps. It will match the desktop platform to improve fidelity. New widgets, such as Scrollbars and DraggableScrollableSheet helped with the improvements in trackpad interactions. These new tools in Flutter 3.7 features also help control the text selection within a scrolling context. AnimatedGrid and SliverAnimatedGrid are two other useful widgets introduced in the new Flutter update.

Addition of Widgets in Flutter 3.7 Features

CupertinoListSection and CupertinoListTile are two new additional widgets available now to show a scrollable widget list in iOS style. They come under the Cupertino versions of ListTile and ListView classes in material design. It results in enhanced user experience and high performance. Easy and better optimization with the Cupertino framework results in effective and more interactive iOS apps.

Improved Internalization and Multi-lingual Support

When it comes to multi-lingual Flutter app development solutions, developers look for a more streamlined and straightforward process. The new Flutter update has completely revamped the internalization support. The gen-I10n tool got rewritten and it now supports-

-> Detailed syntax errors,

-> Complicated messages consist of multiple plurals, selects, placeholders, gender, and much more,

As a result, cross-platform app developers now easily provide language translation giving them more control over language resources. Check out Flutter’s updated internalization page for more information. Thus, updates in the Flutter framework have eased the developers’ jobs to develop more robust and functional Flutter-based mobile apps for global users.

Invoking Platform Channels from the Isolate

New updates in the Flutter 3.7 features have improved and increased flexibility in one of the main features of Flutter, called Isolates. When working with host platform code and isolates, developers were required to call platform channels from Flutter’s main isolate resulting in increased complexity. New updates allow users to call platform channels from any isolate of their choice. Thus, it results in improving flexibility for users only by writing custom platform-specific codes.

Beter Area Selection Tools

The new Flutter 3.7 update allows the use of keyboard selections in SelectionArea to interact with users using text and other elements in the Flutter app. Users that prefer keyboard navigation can experience a great user experience as the existing selection got extended and now has got more options. Developers now can offer enhanced usability and accessibility in their Flutter app solution to users.

New Text Magnifying Glass Support

A new feature got its place in the features of Flutter and that is the text magnifying glass. Now developers can use the magnifying glass tool appearing during the text selection tool on Android and iOS. You must read the MagnifierConfiguration property to disable and customize it.

Bitcode Depreciation

Starting with Xcode14, bit code is not needed for WatchOS and tvOS applications. The reason behind this is that the App Store no longer accepts bitcode submissions for WatchOS and tvOS, rendering them useless in Flutter app development. Thus, Flutter 3.7 features no longer include Bitcode. Even if bitcode is rendered disabled by default, Flutter app solutions will not get affected. Even if you have this feature of Flutter in the Xcode project, developers can manually disable it after updating.

Memory Management Improvement

Reduced jank, less CPU usage, and reduced memory footprint are some of the results the Flutter app development community received after the improvement in memory management. They are the result of garbage collection pause, background GC threads & velocity allocation, and several other factors. All these updates in the memory function of memory help the Flutter app development company build high-performing applications compatible with all platforms and offer better user-friendly Flutter app solutions.

Enhanced Interfaces for iOS

Producing visually stunning interfaces during iOS Flutter app development was the main goal of Flutter 3.7 features update. Flutter app solutions for iOS include the blur effects on native iOS views when Flutter widgets are in use. As a result, the Flutter app displays stunning visual effects and improves the user experience.

In addition, updates in features of Flutter 3.7 help developers reduce jank on iOS devices. To do so, two improvements were introduced in the Flutter framework. These two improvements are the addition of dummy CADisplayLink and the refresh rate set by CADisplayLink. Such improvements offer consistent and smooth animation on iOS devices.

These are the most significant improvements made by Google in the Flutter framework. Other notable improvements in the Fluter are as follows-

Other Notable Improvements in Flutter 3.7 Features

SLSA

SLSA stands for “Software Licensing Supply Arrangement.” Its objective is to protect software codes from any malicious attacks. It protects every link in the chain from a supply chain attack. With the updates in Flutter 3.7, features will support the SLSA-3 standard. Developers are expecting the new updates in the upcoming year will also support SLSA-4.

Rendering Content into Multiple Windows

One of the new updates in the features of Flutter is related to the development stage of Flutter app solutions. Developers now can run Flutter in multiple windows on the desktop. It helps developers at the time of presentation of the Flutter application. Also, if developers are required to use multiple Flutter app instances to showcase various features at the same time, the new updates will ease the work.

Introducing Screenshot Feature on Pub.dev

With the new updates in the features of Flutter 3.7, Google introduced the screenshot feature on Pub.dev. Now, developers can see what the widget looks like in the app. They can search for the most interesting package and use the widget after examining its screenshot. The addition of screenshots on pubspec.yaml is also possible.

Final Thoughts

Now, you are aware of the updates in features of Flutter 3.7. If you are looking to update your business mobile app, you must contact your Flutter app development company and make the app functions more smooth and more user-friendly. The talented Flutter developers have made instrumental changes in the Flutter features and contributed to removing Flutter app development hurdles faced by other global developers. The Flutter dev team is still working tirelessly to make the FLutter 3.7 features more efficient. So, developers worldwide can build more user-centric Flutter app solutions using customizable widgets and other UI components. You can read all the related documents on Flutter.dev and Pub.dev for more information.

FAQs

Q1. Is Flutter still a good choice in 2023?

The Flutter community got the gift of new updates in the features of Flutter in January 2023 in Kenya. The new updates include enhanced support for Material 3, improved internalization, widgets support for iOS, and many more. Due to its advanced features, Flutter is becoming more popular among global developers.

Q2. Does Flutter have a future?

The future of the Flutter app development framework is bright as the Flutter community is growing rapidly and catching the attention of global developers. Google, one of the top tech giants worldwide, supports and makes consistent improvements in the Flutter features. Thus, making Flutter the best choice for communicative and interactive cross-platform app development solutions.

Q3. Can Flutter replace React Native?

It’s not completely true. However, Flutter might replace React Native in the future. The reasons behind the claim include better compatibility, higher performance, an easy cross-platform app development process, and many more updates in the features of Flutter over time.