Building Desktop Apps with Flutter on macOS and Windows

Introduction

Flutter’s shift to stable desktop support unlocks true cross-platform desktop development. Whether targeting macOS desktop or Windows desktop environments, Flutter’s single codebase streamlines UI consistency, benefiting startups, solo founders, and agile engineering teams. This tutorial dives into setting up, configuring, and optimizing a Flutter desktop app on both macOS and Windows, with code snippets and best practices.

Setting Up Your Environment

Before coding, confirm your machine meets the requirements:

• macOS desktop: macOS 10.15+ with Xcode installed. • Windows desktop: Windows 10 SDK (10.0.18362.0+), Visual Studio 2019+ with the “Desktop development with C++” workload.

Enable Flutter’s desktop support in your channel:

flutter channel stable
flutter upgrade
flutter config --enable-macos-desktop
flutter config --enable-windows-desktop

Verify targets:

flutter devices  
# Should list macOS and Windows (if on the respective host)

These steps make flutter create scaffold desktop folders alongside lib/, android/, and ios/.

Creating a Desktop Flutter Project

Generate a new app:

flutter create my_desktop_app
cd my_desktop_app

Review the project tree—desktop/macos and desktop/windows contain native build files. Open macOS in Xcode (open macos/Runner.xcworkspace) or Windows in Visual Studio. Test your app:

flutter run -d macos   # on macOS host  
flutter run -d windows # on Windows host

The default main.dart uses MaterialApp. For desktop, you might switch to a responsive layout or add menu bars. Example minimal main.dart:

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';

void main() {
  runApp(const DesktopApp());
}

class DesktopApp extends StatelessWidget {
  const DesktopApp({Key? key}) : super(key: key);
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
      title: 'Flutter Desktop Example',
      home: Scaffold(
        appBar: AppBar(title: const Text('Desktop Home')),
        body: const Center(child: Text('Hello, Desktop Flutter!')),
      ),
    );
  }
}

Run and verify window resizing, DPI scaling, and keyboard/mouse interactions.

Platform-Specific Considerations

While Flutter’s core UI code is platform-agnostic, desktop exposes native extensions.

macOS desktop:

• Add menus via NSMenu in AppDelegate.swift.

• Handle dark mode and retina scaling in Info.plist.

Example addition in macos/Runner/AppDelegate.swift:

override func applicationDidFinishLaunching(_ notification: Notification) {
  let mainMenu = NSMenu()
  mainMenu.addItem(NSMenuItem(title: "File", action: nil, keyEquivalent: ""))
  NSApp.mainMenu = mainMenu
  super.applicationDidFinishLaunching(notification)
}

Windows desktop:

• Modify windows/runner/win32_window.cpp for window style (resizable, minimum size).

• Customize DPI awareness in win32_window.cpp by invoking SetProcessDpiAwarenessContext(DPI_AWARENESS_CONTEXT_PER_MONITOR_AWARE);.

These tweaks ensure native look-and-feel. Use conditional imports in Dart for platform-specific services:

import 'dart:io';

void setupPlatformFeatures() {
  if (Platform.isMacOS) {
    // initialize macOS-specific plugin
  } else if (Platform.isWindows) {
    // initialize Windows-specific plugin
  }
}

Optimizing Performance and UI Adaptations

Desktop apps often demand higher frame rates, large window sizes, and support for keyboard/mouse inputs.

• Enable desktop shaders: flutter build windows --release --bundle-sksl-path=path/to/sksl.json.

• Use LayoutBuilder and MediaQuery.of(context).size to adapt layouts for large screens.

• Implement keyboard shortcuts with Shortcuts and Actions widgets:

Shortcuts(
  shortcuts: {LogicalKeySet(LogicalKeyboardKey.control, LogicalKeyboardKey.s): SaveIntent()},
  child: Actions(
    actions: {SaveIntent: CallbackAction(onInvoke: (_) => saveDocument())},
    child: Focus(
      autofocus: true,
      child: MyEditorWidget(),
    ),
  ),
);

• Lazy-load large assets and leverage compute for CPU-bound tasks. • Profile with flutter devtools to inspect memory usage and frame rendering times. Desktop targets often push beyond mobile’s memory and CPU envelope—profiling is key.

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Conclusion

Flutter desktop development on macOS and Windows empowers teams to ship high-fidelity desktop apps using a unified Dart codebase. By configuring native build settings, customizing platform-specific behaviors, and optimizing for large screens and input devices, you can deliver production-ready desktop applications quickly and efficiently.