Recently, Google has announced the new stable release of Flutter 2.2 at its Google I/O 2021. Flutter 2.2 is the latest version of Flutter 2. In this day and age, most developers across the globe are using Flutter. For instance, ByteDance – the company behind TikTok, is using Flutter for more than 70 apps. Thus, productivity is the massive reason for TikTok to continue using Flutter. Hence, the launch of new features of Flutter focuses on enhancing the productivity and quality of Flutter.
There are over 2,00,000 apps using Flutter in the Google Play Store, including eBay, MyBMW, Grab and more coming in every day.
– Google I/O 2021
Flutter is more than just the framework and tool. To create the best-in-class user experience using Flutter, you need a strong ecosystem. Therefore, it is significant to stay updated and know about Google’s latest offerings on Flutter development services. So, in this blog post, we will see some of the new feature updates in Flutter 2.2.
Key highlights of Flutter 2.2
Payment and in-app purchases plugin
Google has launched the new payment plugin for in-app purchases. With this new feature, it will be much easier for you to integrate in-app purchases into your apps. Built in partnership with the Google Pay team, the new payment plugin will let you accept payment for goods on both Android (Google Pay) and iOS (Apple Pay) platforms. Also, Google has re-architected the in-app purchase plugin and moved it to production quality, which will enable you to monetize your apps.
Google Mobile Ads SDK
Google has updated the Google Mobile Ads Software Development Kit (SDK). It is now made available with the null safety feature. Apart from this, there are a handful of updates in the Google Mobile Ads (GMA) SDK.
- Google has migrated the GMA SDK to support null safety.
- Flutter now supports the latest version of the iOS GMA SDK that will prepare you for the app tracking transparency enforcement.
- Google has added a new Ads format called the Adaptive Banner. It is the next generation of responsive Ads that will automatically optimize Ads size for each device to maximize Ads performance.
Material You
The Google team has worked closely with material design to build the new feature with the latest guidance and updates. This includes support for large screens such as navigation and other adaptive improvements. Material You is the new material design for Android 12. It depicts the next design evolution, spirited with surfaces that stretch, shimmer, and move as they respond to the user’s touch.
Platform Adaptive Apps
Flutter 2.2 expands its support to more platforms with its Platform Adaptive Apps feature. With this feature, Flutter provides new opportunities to build and run apps on different platforms such as a tablet, mobile, desktop, etc. from a single codebase. The new feature will not only enable you to build apps that are multi-platform but are fully platform adaptive. Flutter 2.2 gives you the support you need to tailor your apps as per different form factors, input types (touch vs. mouse+keyboard) and screen size for platforms like navigation, system menus, drawers, etc.
FlutterFire updates
FlutterFire is Flutter’s support for Firebase. It offers support for the beta release of a new Firebase product: Firebase App Check. It will protect your backend resources from phishing or billing fraud. There are a few handfuls of new feature updates to the FlutterFire plugins, including the integration of Flutter with Firebase with this release of Flutter:
- Support for the Firebase Local Emulator Suite
- Optimize data queries with data bundles
- TypeSafe API for reading and writing data
Dart 2.13
Dart (Google’s programming language) is the secret sauce behind the Flutter. The new release Dart 2.13 comes with footer 2.2. It now comes with official support for a Docker image and GitHub Actions that will help in the cloud-based deployment of your business logic. This Dart update contains a new type aliases feature that includes both functions and non-functions. This will allow you to rename your classes in a way that you can give short names to long, complicated types. Dart 2.13 is now made available for a separate download.
DartPad workshops
Google has added a new, step-by-step UI for DartPad. Now, DartPad is a web-based editor for single-file dart and Flutter demos. It handles thousands of concurrent users while providing real-time syntax analysis and fast compilation to JavaScript. DartPad workshops will give you a guided workshop experience.
Null safety
Google has made sound null safety the default feature for all new Flutter app development projects. The null safety feature is now available in the unstable channel along with the stable channel of the framework. With null safety, you can now eliminate the largest class of bugs/errors from your code, increase app performance and reduce package size. It will assist you to streamline type aliases and native interoperability. So, to reap all these benefits, you can migrate your apps to null safety.
Smoother page transition for iOS
In the release of Flutter 2.2, Google has tripled the speed to present the initial page transition for any app targeting iOS. The page transition in Cupertino has also been made smoother to provide a rich user experience. In fact, in the last six months, Google’s turnaround time on critical issues has decreased by more than half. They have also made it possible for you to reduce the turnaround time to test your apps and the time to install apps.
Experience the power of Flutter web
Google also announced new feature updates in Flutter Flow. It is a low code tool used for building Flutter apps, all in your browser. This will give you superpowers to build apps easier and faster with less code. The goal of FlutterFlow is to allow you to write custom code using real data from the Firebase in a WYSIWYG environment. With this new Flutter web update, you can optimize the performance of your Flutter web apps.
Flutter DevTools
On the developer tooling front, Flutter 2.2 offers a handful of features in the Flutter DevTools. Google has added two new features to the memory tab in the Flutter DevTool:
1. Allocation stack trace – The ability to track down where an object is allocated so that in case of a leakage, you know which code did the allocation.
2. Custom memory timeline events – The ability to inject custom messages in the memory timeline so that you can provide markers specific to your app.
What are the other new features in Flutter 2.2?
- Automated scrolling
- Type alias
- Custom text actions
- Null safety update
- Windows UWP alpha
- iOS shader compilation
- Background caching
- Autocomplete and ScaffoldMessenger
- Android deferred components
Way to go for Flutter!
Today, developers across the world are entrusting their UI to Flutter to meet users’ needs and provide them rich multi-platform experience. And the release of Flutter 2.2 at Google I/O 2021 drew the attention of many app development organizations, worldwide. The main focus was on fixing issues, optimizing performance and increasing the utility of new features announced in Flutter 2. If you have any questions regarding the new version of Flutter 2 or want to develop apps using the Flutter 2.2 platform, get in touch with our experts. You can even hire a Flutter developer to reap the advantages of Flutter 2.2.
