This week in Flutter #46: Google I/O is announced, while Apple unveils new hardware

19 March 2022

Google announced its annual Google I/O conference for developers. It is, again, taking place online. The webpage has an interesting countdown to the event on May 11 and 12, composed of concentric rings made of dots. Can you see how that works? Here is a hint: the inner circle represents the seconds, try to count them.

On the Apple side, there was an event last week unveiling new hardware. No M2, yet, but a new desktop with much higher specs than the MacBook Pro. From a Flutter developer’s point of view, I do not think such a powerful device is really needed. You can comfortably work on your Flutter apps with a Mac Mini or even a MacBook Air. Just make sure to get at least 500GB of storage, because 256GB is definitely not enough.

Are you going to buy the new Mac Studio? Let me know in the comment section below.

- Michele Volpato

Development 🧑‍💻

🔗 Flutter & Shaders — An initial look

Shaders are a set of instructions, but the instructions are executed all at once for every single pixel on the screen. That means the code you write has to behave differently depending on the position of the pixel on the screen.

- The Book of Shaders

Shaders are widely used in games, which is why I know nothing about them. Fear not! Because in this article, Jochum van der Ploeg dives into using shaders in Flutter.

🔗 Implementing Android 12 Material You’s Monet theme engine in Flutter

(Not so) recently, Google introduced Material You, a new version of Material Design where the colors of your app adapt to the background image on the device. In this article, Vinay Tiparadi shows you how to take advantage of it in your Flutter app.

🔗 Flutter Game Lessons in 2022

This is a series of videos I want to watch when I have some free time. Craig Oda uses Flame to create a 2D “game” about old Japan. 🔥

🔗 Hosting a private Dart package repository

A recent Dart release added support for private repositories for packages. You might be using the same code in more than one app, but the code is private or very tightened to the family of apps your company makes. You do not want to publish it on pub.dev. If you need to implement a private package repository for Dart and Flutter, you can follow this article by the Dart team.

🔗 Flutter App Architecture with Riverpod: An Introduction

Riverpod is getting used more and more by the Flutter community. In this article, Andrea Bizzotto gives his view of an architecture that works well with Riverpod and Flutter. He also compares it to Clean, MVC, BLoC-based, and other architectures.

🔗 Implementing face recognition and authentication in Flutter

Biometric authentication is a feature that is often asked by our clients. You let the user sign in with their username and password, and save the authentication token in secure storage. Then, the next time they want to use the app, they can use biometrics to let the app fetch the token from the secure storage. In this article, Yusuf Ahmed shows you how to add biometric authentication to a Flutter app.

Backend 🗄

🔗 Flutter Appwrite a Firebase Competitor 🎦

I already linked to Appwrite tutorials multiple times in past issues of this newsletter. If I remember correctly they were all written tutorials. If you prefer to follow a video tutorial, check out this one by Robert Brunhage.

Tools 🛠

🔗 Distribute your Flutter Application with Azure DevOps and App Center

I never used Azure DevOps, but I do know that many companies are deep in the Microsoft universe for development tools. In case you work in one of those companies, here is an article that can help you integrate CI/CD for your Flutter apps, by Luke Moody.

Others 🤷‍♂️

You need to watch this video from Vandad Nahavandipoor on how to create your own shortcut in macOS for Visual Studio Code to extract a widget. 🤯

🔗 Adaptive vs. Responsive | Decoding Flutter 🎦

Learn the basics about adaptive and responsive Flutter apps in this video by Andrew Fitz Gibbon.

🔗 runApp function deep dive (The Boring Flutter Development Show, Ep. 56) 🎦

Ok, I haven’t watched this episode by Andrew Fitz Gibbon, yet. But I am curious. Is there something surprising happening when we call runApp in Flutter?

That’s it for this week.

If you want to comment on any of this week’s entries, you can do it in the comment section below.

Have a bug-free week,