Using Flutter's Material 3 (M3) Widgets Today

Introduction

Flutter’s adoption of Material Design 3 (M3) brings modern theming, dynamic color, and refined components to mobile development. M3 focuses on personalization, accessibility, and improved UX patterns. Even though Flutter’s stable channel defaults to Material 2, you can leverage M3 widgets today to stay ahead in interface design, ensuring your app looks fresh on Android, iOS, and web targets.

Enabling Material 3 in Flutter

To start using M3 widgets, opt into materialVersion 3 in your ThemeData. This setting toggles the updated component library and color system. Ensure you’re on Flutter 3.0 or above and import material.dart.

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';

void main() {
  runApp(MaterialApp(
    theme: ThemeData(
      useMaterial3: true,
      colorScheme: ColorScheme.fromSeed(seedColor: Colors.indigo),
    ),
    home: const HomePage(),
  ));
}

The useMaterial3: true flag activates M3 defaults. Using ColorScheme.fromSeed generates a dynamic palette based on a single seed color, aligning with Material You principles.

M3 Color and Typography

M3 introduces a richer color system with primary, secondary, tertiary, and neutral palettes. Dynamic colors adapt to user preferences on Android 12+. To access them:

• Theme.of(context).colorScheme.primary and similar properties. • Typography updated with typography presets. You can reference text styles via Theme.of(context).textTheme or override individual styles.

Example: Applying the headlineLarge style.

Text(
  'Welcome to M3',
  style: Theme.of(context).textTheme.headlineLarge,
)

Beyond defaults, you can supply Typography.material2021() to ThemeData for M3’s updated font weights and sizes.

Using Themed Widgets

M3 widgets follow new default shapes, paddings, and animations. Common widgets include:

• ElevatedButton, OutlinedButton, TextButton

• NavigationBar and NavigationRail

• Card, Chip, and Switch

Example: ElevatedButton adopts rounded corners and updated ripple behavior.

ElevatedButton(
  onPressed: () {},
  child: const Text('Press Me'),
)

By default, buttons pull their background and foreground colors from the active colorScheme. You can override these via style: ButtonStyle(...) or by defining a global ElevatedButtonThemeData in your ThemeData.

Customizing Components

Even with M3’s defaults, you’ll often need custom styling to match brand guidelines. Flutter’s theming hierarchy allows granular overrides.

ThemeData(
  elevatedButtonTheme: ElevatedButtonThemeData(
    style: ElevatedButton.styleFrom(
      backgroundColor: Colors.deepPurple,
      shape: RoundedRectangleBorder(
        borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(12),
      ),
    ),
  ),
)

For more control, implement custom MaterialStateProperty logic. This lets you change colors or elevation based on interaction state (hovered, pressed, disabled).

Adaptive Layouts with Material 3

M3 emphasizes responsive design. Widgets like NavigationBar and NavigationRail adapt automatically to screen size:

• Use LayoutBuilder or MediaQuery to switch between NavigationBar (for narrow screens) and NavigationRail or NavigationDrawer (for wider screens).

• Leverage the useMaterial3 flag on adaptive widgets to maintain consistency.

Example snippet:

Widget build(BuildContext context) {
  final isWide = MediaQuery.of(context).size.width > 600;
  return Scaffold(
    body: isWide ? const Sidebar() : const MobileHome(),
    bottomNavigationBar: isWide ? null : const NavigationBar(destinations: []),
  );
}

This pattern ensures your UI scales gracefully from phones to tablets.

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Conclusion

Material 3 in Flutter unlocks a modern, accessible, and adaptive design system ready for production use. By toggling useMaterial3, embracing the dynamic color system, and leveraging updated widgets, you can deliver a polished interface that responds to user preferences and device characteristics. Experiment with theme overrides and adaptive layouts to fully harness M3’s capabilities in your next mobile development project.