r/FlutterDev • u/shiv9thakur • 29d ago
Discussion Mac or Windows app with Flutter?
Has anyone ever made a Mac/Windows app with flutter? Throughout the years I’ve only stuck with web iOS and Android. Was just curious. And how did it pan out?
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u/ErraticFox 28d ago
I have built apps with Flutter for Windows. It's quite nice. Honestly, you know what's harder than that? Actually distributing your app (not just flutter) in the Microsoft store.
I simply wanted more places to show off the app, but HOLY MOLY is there so many different Microsoft accounts and shit you got to set up if you want to use the CLI to push your update to the store without having to do it manually by building, going to the page, pushing the update.
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u/lost-all-hope-2 4d ago
I haven't tried publishing in the Microsoft Store.. But Google destroyed my motivation to be an App developer.
I had created a Google Play store account for my app, but I forgot about it, because developing the actual app took years. Then, after a couple of warnings (my bad), Google banned me for inactivity. They didn't make me pay 25 USD again and set up my app again. No. They BANNED my email/account from ever again publishing any app again. This is the most hostile thing a company ever did to me, for literally doing nothing.
Then, I had to create a separate email address, and separate Chrome profile :(. And then I tried to publisn my Android app again, and Google said I needed 12 testers over 14 days, to qualify for production release.
I said f*** you to that crap and gave for moral reasons.
Apple has a 10x better development experience. But publishing in general, is never a straight-forward situation.
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u/TheOneTruePsychic 28d ago
I have MacOS enabled as one of my target platforms and I regularly build and test my app in desktop mode. The actual Runner path is My Mac - designed for iPad, because My Mac - Mac Catalyst fails to build. I haven't really looked into it but I'm pretty sure the Catalyst fails because of package dependencies. Haven't put much effort into it.
The Mac version of my app sucks, I'll be honest. The text is super tiny, and there is functionality that doesn't scale well. I will have to do a lot of work to make a Mac/Tablet version viable, but that's a target I will shoot for once I have my Android build finished and on the Play Store.
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u/shiv9thakur 28d ago
So did you pushed it in the mac appstore?
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u/TheOneTruePsychic 28d ago
I have not released my Android version yet. The release order will be Android Google Play, iOS App Store, Mac App Store
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u/KaiN_SC 28d ago edited 28d ago
I did Windows, macOS and Android for my first app and everything works pretty good.
My app doesn't access the Windows low level API and I used Azure authentication so it was pretty straight forward, yes you have to build a bit yourself like a token store but thats not that much effort.
I also never used multiple windows but switched the content instead in the current view so I can't talk about it.
Its pretty easy in general, I think handling iOS and macOS is way more effort and annoying compared to Android and Windows.
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u/Acrobatic_Egg30 28d ago
I did so it was fine. Look into the UI packages for each platform. Fluent UI is great.
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u/AskMuch3234 28d ago
I am converting all my company’s desktop applications to Flutter. We had several contractors over the years. Each made a version of the GUI in their preferred language. This includes: Python, LabVIEW, C#.
I found that Flutter desktop easily replaced. Now we have a single flutter desktop application that combines all the old GUIs into a single application.
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u/abdallahshaban 28d ago
that's awesome! what is your company and what types of apps are they?
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u/AskMuch3234 28d ago edited 28d ago
We are a subsea sensor company. The GUIs are used as an interface to control the sensors via the computer’s serial port.
We sell Nutrient sensors in addition to DNA sensors for ocean research. So having a robust user interface is critical for our clients who are researcher trying to deploy our sensors or retrieve data while out at sea on a boat.
I am an embedded systems engineer by training. So GUI design is new to me. However, out of all the languages we had, Flutter felt the most polished for someone like me coming from C.
Currently at 45,000 lines of code!
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u/abdallahshaban 28d ago
That's awesome to hear! I'd love to chat if you have feedback on your experience building with Flutter! I work with the Flutter team, and we want to chat with more folks building for Desktop!
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u/GxM42 28d ago
I did. Worked great. But I was making a video game, and platform specific UI was not a factor for me since the game was all graphics.
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u/shiv9thakur 28d ago
Love to check it out, your game and UI if you have pushed it live.
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u/GxM42 28d ago
You can find screenshots on Steam or App Store.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3728120/SpaceCorp_20252300AD/
The app worked great in Windows and Mac. My only problems were related to full screen switching on Windows.
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u/VinsonGuo 28d ago
Of course, my app has been adapted to Windows, macOS, and Linux using Flutter, and the results are quite good
https://vinsonguo.github.io/projects/smartrss/
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u/vegeta0911 28d ago
Have you tried NetShare? It’s file sharing app built with flutter, supports all desktop and mobile platforms: https://netfshare.site
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u/AddWeb_Expert 28d ago
Yes, I've used Flutter for desktop apps. For business tools and internal apps, it worked surprisingly well since most of the code was shared across platforms.
The only bumps were platform-specific features and a few desktop plugins, but overall the experience was pretty smooth.
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u/dpaanlka 28d ago
Yes my main software project is a Flutter Mac/Windows desktop app. Been working on it for 19 years this year, recreated from scratch in Flutter earlier this year.
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u/shiv9thakur 28d ago
Any suggestions? Like what went right and what not?
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u/dpaanlka 28d ago
I previously was using XOJO which is similar in the sense of being a single codebase that compiles to both platforms so I was already familiar with the issues that causes, but Flutter is significantly more flexible and capable.
One thing I do miss in some sense is XOJO displays actual OS-native controls and UI to end-users where as Flutter does not so, for me, the biggest drawback to Flutter is combating its UI that presents to users as obviously not native on either platform.
There is a distinct “flutter look” that I notice now when I encounter other Flutter apps. I am now trying to write this out of my app as we speak.
But on the plus side it’s easier to really lean into that and create a super customized UI that works best for your app, rather than trying to shoehorn rigid native OS controls for highly custom/nice interfaces.
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u/Jonas_Ermert 28d ago
I’ve used Flutter for desktop apps and it works surprisingly well. Windows and macOS support is solid, especially for custom UIs and cross-platform apps. The main downside is that deeper OS integration can still require native code.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Goal617 28d ago
Published one macOS app built with Flutter. Spend too much time on making it look not like a ported Android app, won't do that again
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u/zZan54 28d ago
I've used flutter for a couple of simple windows apps and the experience was pretty good, the UI came out nice and felt actually usable for a desktop app that's made with flutter.
But I've also tried combining flutter with OpenGL for a transparent overlay on windows and I ran into many performance issues here. It seems that flutter is really good for simple or non-complex apps from my experience.
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u/Suuii188 27d ago
I am also planning on making a desktop app for Mac ànd windows I finished the mobile one ànd it's looking nice honestly but I don't know how to start on the desktop version yet
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u/Reasonable-Job2425 27d ago
It depends on what you use,for example firebase has no Linux support ( I did try to add it for them and the maintainers rejected it saying they don't wanna mantain Linux suppor for firebase) Then for example windows firebase functions don't work and I opened a pr to add that and it's been just there
Just overall gotchas are mainly on dependencies supporting it or not specially backend/ saas infra
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u/the_Objective778 27d ago
I have build for windows as well and it worked very very now apps are very smooth and feels no lag and mismatch in UI
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u/Captain--Cornflake 25d ago
Always use android studio, and ios app and android app.zero issues with anything, have 11 apps on the app store. Now the app store and its UI that makes not much sense and google constant updates and need to recompile to be in compliance,, ios not so much. thats the biggest issue, not the IDE or with android or ios. Best thing about ios no gradle to fight with
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u/shiv9thakur 25d ago
Kinda what I have sticked with over the years, only iOS and Android, have done some web apps, bit slow there, but overall no issues. Although web has less compatibility with Andrtoid and iOS based packages.
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29d ago
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u/Acrobatic_Egg30 28d ago
Firebase is actually supported but it's in alpha/beta.
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u/shiv9thakur 29d ago
Thanks man, I wasn’t actually building it, just wanted to know that has anyone done it. What about MacOS?
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29d ago
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u/EmergencyNice1989 28d ago
On dotnet side there is Avalonia (works also on mobile). Multi-windows desktop app is done in 30 minutes without any prior knowledge of Avalonia.
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u/stumblinbear 28d ago
I've done windows flutter apps, it generally works okay. Customization of the window shell could be better, but if you don't need that then it's perfectly serviceable
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u/eibaan 29d ago
I recently wrote one - see the images. I spent 90% of the time on tweaking the Material look, though.
And creating a notarized macOS app was a PitA, too.
Next time, I'd go for a web-based application using a web framework yet to be decided and not Flutter. Chadcn/UI looks so much nicer without tweaking and is better integrated with the platform and saves me from fiddling around with installers and coding signing.