{"slug": "flutter", "name": "Flutter", "category": "dev-libs", "category_name": "Libraries and frameworks", "description": "Google's open-source UI toolkit for building cross-platform apps from a single Dart codebase.", "recommenders": 20, "commenters": 30, "warners": 4, "score": 15.859, "rising": 9.38, "first": "2025-11-06", "latest": "2026-10-02", "why": "HN commenters like it for shipping one codebase to mobile, desktop and web and for a smooth, hot-reloading Dart workflow.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 17, "neutral": 10, "compare": 1, "warn": 4}, "spark": [0, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 1, 2, 1, 9, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": ["Cross-platform reach", "Developer experience"], "caveat": "Non-native feel", "short_quote": "Flutter is a nice stable platform, I'd highly recommend it.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://flutter.dev", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Flutter"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters like it for shipping one codebase to mobile, desktop and web", "cites": [{"id": 788550048, "item_id": 49284378, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284378", "by": "satvikpendem", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Working on all devices with minimal effort. That's what I use it for anyway", "excerpt": "Working on all devices with minimal effort. That's what I use it for anyway, anything else like a sound null safe language with Dart are just a bonus.", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-device apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788568800, "item_id": 49285550, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49285550", "by": "disiplus", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Honestly it's my go-to when I want to have a quick native app on any platform but dont want to bundle electron.", "excerpt": "You don't care what were you trying to build but for a quick me alone Linux app I used Flutter. Honestly it's my go-to when I want to have a quick native app on any platform but dont want to bundle electron.", "context": "", "use_case": "quick cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "ChatGPT Desktop (Codex Desktop) for Linux"}, {"id": 747367152, "item_id": 46710447, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46710447", "by": "agentifysh", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter is already very mature and can produce not only near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible) but can target desktop and even web applications.", "excerpt": "This is a welcome addition but why should Flutter devs use this ? Seems like it requires 32gb of ram! Also Flutter is already very mature and can produce not only near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible) but can target desktop and even web applications. I do wonder how much of a boost skip offers vs Flutter's mobile apps. Will give skip a try when dram prices normalize.", "context": "Flutter developer", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Skip Is Now Free and Open Source"}, {"id": 794619957, "item_id": 49663747, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49663747", "by": "phudyka", "date": "2026-09-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "One Flutter codebase for web, Android and iOS on Supabase.", "excerpt": "Location: France (CET) Remote: Yes, fully remote only (occasional travel/offsites fine) Willing to relocate: No Technologies: Flutter/Dart, Supabase (PostgreSQL, RLS, Deno Edge Functions), TypeScript, React, Next.js, Django, Angular, Docker, GitHub Actions, n8n R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: on request. linkedin.com/in/paul-hudyka, github.com/phudyka, phudyka.github.io Email: phudyka.dev@gmail.com Web and mobile developer. I ship produc", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2026)"}]}, {"text": " and for a smooth, hot-reloading Dart workflow.", "cites": [{"id": 788558816, "item_id": 49284926, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284926", "by": "faangguyindia", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am glad I picked Flutter over React Native!", "excerpt": "I vouch for Flutter over React Native; we built https://macrocodex.app/ with 16,000+ users already! And it's completely free no ads, no subscriptions, or donations, for the public benefit of improving health and fitness. It's a guaranteed weight loss or gain app; results within 2-5 weeks! Don't believe? well just read reviews. We do not have Revenue, so no money to spend on marketing. OK so that's brief description o", "context": "backend developer building first mobile app", "use_case": "mobile app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 776265857, "item_id": 48516616, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48516616", "by": "rjh29", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter is a lot more consistent, reactive, and all done in one way (Dart) and it supports hot reload natively.", "excerpt": "As a \"batteries included\" framework Qt is undoubtably amazing but I used it on a project recently and it struck me as dated compared to Flutter or React Native. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I had to write a lot of boilerplate C++ even when using QML. The layout engine feels byzantine. The state management is mostly manual. Flutter is a lot more consistent, reactive, and all done in one way (Dart) and it supports hot ", "context": "", "use_case": "UI development", "switched_from": "", "story": "The state of building user interfaces in Rust"}, {"id": 788554464, "item_id": 49284654, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284654", "by": "0rzech", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love working with Dart", "excerpt": "Completely opposite experience for me. I love working with Dart (which IMO is _not_ \"worst parts of Java and Javascript (...) turned (...) into a language\", \"Terrible to write, terrible to read, terrible to use\" - quite the opposite, actually) and its toolchain, including Flutter. I find the architecture simple to follow, no need for \"either print apps as fast as possible or to emulate some Clean Code like behavior\",", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 747406112, "item_id": 46712882, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46712882", "by": "Zigurd", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter makes attractive UI easy.", "excerpt": "I'm currently using Flutter for a project. Considering I've been lead author or co-author on a few Android programming books, using a cross platform SDK was new for me. Dart is easy to learn, and Flutter makes attractive UI easy. I love to work on a big ambitious projects that really need platform specific implementations, but for the vast majority of cases a good cross platform SDK works well, and is a cost-efficien", "context": "author of Android programming books", "use_case": "cross-platform mobile app", "switched_from": "", "story": "2 years building a kids audio app as a solo dev \u2013 lessons learned"}]}, {"text": " The most common caveat is that apps can feel non-native on iOS, especially in scrolling and text fields,", "cites": [{"id": 788541168, "item_id": 49283823, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49283823", "by": "phist_mcgee", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I could instantly tell without looking it up that it was a flutter app, because the scrolling felt non-native.", "excerpt": "They still haven't got native scrolling perfect for iOS. I used a big name app just today and I could instantly tell without looking it up that it was a flutter app, because the scrolling felt non-native.", "context": "", "use_case": "iOS apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 782399296, "item_id": 48899956, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48899956", "by": "busymom0", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Last I used flutter, editable text views was where it wasn't acceptable for me.", "excerpt": "Last I used flutter, editable text views was where it wasn't acceptable for me. On iOS, the default text view comes with a lot of built in stuff automatically such as cut copy paste, lookup definition, translate etc. Flutter's didn't have these.", "context": "", "use_case": "iOS app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Building and Shipping Mac and iOS Apps Without Ever Opening Xcode"}, {"id": 788587168, "item_id": 49286698, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49286698", "by": "sgt", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For stuff where design does not matter much, such as enterprise apps that \"put food on the table\", as you say, I use Flutter and still get a very decent result.", "excerpt": "For end user apps, I want them to look according to the OS, at least on Apple devices. That's what picky customers. For stuff where design does not matter much, such as enterprise apps that \"put food on the table\", as you say, I use Flutter and still get a very decent result. But with sufficient time and effort, proper native iOS/macOS wins every time.", "context": "", "use_case": "enterprise apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}]}, {"text": " with some also worried about Google's long-term commitment.", "cites": [{"id": 788496544, "item_id": 49281034, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281034", "by": "doodlesdev", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Flutter is an extremely enjoyable development experience I would recommend anyone I care for to stay away from.", "excerpt": "While I've used Flutter since Alpha, I've been away for a few years. A few things have shocked me in these release notes: how come Impeller still wasn't the default engine for all platforms? Also, why are they migrating to WASM if one of the core features of Dart is compiling to JavaScript? Finally, how come multi window support only get viable now, after four years having desktop support? Honestly, Flutter is an ext", "context": "used Flutter since Alpha", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788548768, "item_id": 49284298, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284298", "by": "GeneralMaximus", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It\u2019s a poor toolkit for building anything that must last for more than 3-5 years.", "excerpt": "Why would you not? I use Ableton, Figma, and Emacs regularly. I have a decade (or more) of muscle memory around these apps. If they suddenly decided to adopt the look, feel, and conventions of their underlying host platform, I\u2019d be very upset. If I\u2019m using Emacs, I don\u2019t want to use Cmd+S to save my files on macOS and Ctrl+S on Windows. I\u2019ve already memorized C-x C-s. I don\u2019t want Ableton to adopt whatever new design", "context": "", "use_case": "long-lived cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Cross-platform reach", "summary": "One codebase targets Android, iOS, web and desktop with little native code.", "quotes": [{"id": 788550048, "item_id": 49284378, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284378", "by": "satvikpendem", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Working on all devices with minimal effort. That's what I use it for anyway", "excerpt": "Working on all devices with minimal effort. That's what I use it for anyway, anything else like a sound null safe language with Dart are just a bonus.", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-device apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 794313010, "item_id": 49644563, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644563", "by": "faangguyindia", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We use Flutter; we rarely need to write native code.", "excerpt": "React Native is slow. Hermes VM doesn't even have JIT. If the majority of your app is native code and only a few places are stitched together via JS code that runs in the Hermes VM, then React Native is suitable for you. Look at V8 vs. Hermes performance. We use Flutter; we rarely need to write native code. We have three apps: Symbiote workout app, CalorieCodex, an AI calorie tracker app, and MacroCodex with 17,000+ ", "context": "builds three free mobile apps", "use_case": "mobile apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"}, {"id": 747367152, "item_id": 46710447, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46710447", "by": "agentifysh", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter is already very mature and can produce not only near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible) but can target desktop and even web applications.", "excerpt": "This is a welcome addition but why should Flutter devs use this ? Seems like it requires 32gb of ram! Also Flutter is already very mature and can produce not only near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible) but can target desktop and even web applications. I do wonder how much of a boost skip offers vs Flutter's mobile apps. Will give skip a try when dram prices normalize.", "context": "Flutter developer", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Skip Is Now Free and Open Source"}]}, {"label": "Developer experience", "summary": "Commenters call development smooth and consistent, with native hot reload and an enjoyable Dart language.", "quotes": [{"id": 788558816, "item_id": 49284926, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284926", "by": "faangguyindia", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am glad I picked Flutter over React Native!", "excerpt": "I vouch for Flutter over React Native; we built https://macrocodex.app/ with 16,000+ users already! And it's completely free no ads, no subscriptions, or donations, for the public benefit of improving health and fitness. It's a guaranteed weight loss or gain app; results within 2-5 weeks! Don't believe? well just read reviews. We do not have Revenue, so no money to spend on marketing. OK so that's brief description o", "context": "backend developer building first mobile app", "use_case": "mobile app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 776265857, "item_id": 48516616, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48516616", "by": "rjh29", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter is a lot more consistent, reactive, and all done in one way (Dart) and it supports hot reload natively.", "excerpt": "As a \"batteries included\" framework Qt is undoubtably amazing but I used it on a project recently and it struck me as dated compared to Flutter or React Native. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I had to write a lot of boilerplate C++ even when using QML. The layout engine feels byzantine. The state management is mostly manual. Flutter is a lot more consistent, reactive, and all done in one way (Dart) and it supports hot ", "context": "", "use_case": "UI development", "switched_from": "", "story": "The state of building user interfaces in Rust"}, {"id": 788554464, "item_id": 49284654, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284654", "by": "0rzech", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love working with Dart", "excerpt": "Completely opposite experience for me. I love working with Dart (which IMO is _not_ \"worst parts of Java and Javascript (...) turned (...) into a language\", \"Terrible to write, terrible to read, terrible to use\" - quite the opposite, actually) and its toolchain, including Flutter. I find the architecture simple to follow, no need for \"either print apps as fast as possible or to emulate some Clean Code like behavior\",", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}]}, {"label": "Consistent UI", "summary": "Makes attractive, pixel-identical UI across platforms easy.", "quotes": [{"id": 788524656, "item_id": 49282791, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49282791", "by": "WA", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter: if you want a pixel perfect version of your app that looks similar on Android and iOS.", "excerpt": "Flutter: if you want a pixel perfect version of your app that looks similar on Android and iOS. Some quite popular apps use it and make a shit ton of money, for example Headspace. More here: https://flutterhunt.com/ React Native: totally viable, because core business logic is the same. If you want native UI elements and all the iOS Liquid Glass stuff, but don\u2019t want to have to completely separate code based, React Na", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform mobile apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 747406112, "item_id": 46712882, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46712882", "by": "Zigurd", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter makes attractive UI easy.", "excerpt": "I'm currently using Flutter for a project. Considering I've been lead author or co-author on a few Android programming books, using a cross platform SDK was new for me. Dart is easy to learn, and Flutter makes attractive UI easy. I love to work on a big ambitious projects that really need platform specific implementations, but for the vast majority of cases a good cross platform SDK works well, and is a cost-efficien", "context": "author of Android programming books", "use_case": "cross-platform mobile app", "switched_from": "", "story": "2 years building a kids audio app as a solo dev \u2013 lessons learned"}, {"id": 788530368, "item_id": 49283148, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49283148", "by": "wiradikusuma", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You should try Dart/Flutter again, they've improved a lot.", "excerpt": "You should try Dart/Flutter again, they've improved a lot. - Dart. It's richer than JS/TS with stronger type safety, and seems purpose-built for UI. Fewer Dart developers than JS, but I'd argue those JS developers cannot be immediately effective coding React Native (Expo) anyway. - Emulated components vs. real native components. For multi-platform apps, this is actually desirable. These kinds of apps have their own d", "context": "Has used Dart and Flutter for years", "use_case": "multi-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}]}, {"label": "Performance", "summary": "Users report it avoids performance issues and the gap with native is negligible.", "quotes": [{"id": 786366720, "item_id": 49147920, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49147920", "by": "refulgentis", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "switched to Flutter as my primary dev kit some years ago: it simply doesn\u2019t have the performance issues mentioned.", "excerpt": "It\u2019s a seductive idea, but it displaces who is responsible for the poor framework development onto users of the framework. It\u2019s easy to say they were just trying to be trendy and thus the real flaw was the trend is bad and the fault of worse devs than us (the young web devs mentioned) The thing that obviates that is the trendy stuff works, yet, SwiftUI doesn\u2019t. (source: I wrote ObjC/Cocoa as early as 2006, and switch", "context": "wrote ObjC/Cocoa since 2006", "use_case": "app development", "switched_from": "Cocoa", "story": "SwiftUI After 7 Years: A Story of Mediocrity"}, {"id": 747367152, "item_id": 46710447, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46710447", "by": "agentifysh", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter is already very mature and can produce not only near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible) but can target desktop and even web applications.", "excerpt": "This is a welcome addition but why should Flutter devs use this ? Seems like it requires 32gb of ram! Also Flutter is already very mature and can produce not only near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible) but can target desktop and even web applications. I do wonder how much of a boost skip offers vs Flutter's mobile apps. Will give skip a try when dram prices normalize.", "context": "Flutter developer", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Skip Is Now Free and Open Source"}, {"id": 788530368, "item_id": 49283148, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49283148", "by": "wiradikusuma", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You should try Dart/Flutter again, they've improved a lot.", "excerpt": "You should try Dart/Flutter again, they've improved a lot. - Dart. It's richer than JS/TS with stronger type safety, and seems purpose-built for UI. Fewer Dart developers than JS, but I'd argue those JS developers cannot be immediately effective coding React Native (Expo) anyway. - Emulated components vs. real native components. For multi-platform apps, this is actually desirable. These kinds of apps have their own d", "context": "Has used Dart and Flutter for years", "use_case": "multi-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}]}, {"label": "Maturity and adoption", "summary": "Seen as a stable, mature platform used by large companies.", "quotes": [{"id": 788487920, "item_id": 49280495, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49280495", "by": "gumby271", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter is a nice stable platform, I'd highly recommend it.", "excerpt": "How are they limping? Flutter has completely replaced it's rendering engine across all platforms and they're building out major window management support on desktop platforms. At some point there's just not much exciting new stuff to add. Flutter is a nice stable platform, I'd highly recommend it.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788501776, "item_id": 49281361, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281361", "by": "Barrin92", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "With the popularity in the Chinese ecosystem alone there's gotta be a billion plus people using flutter.", "excerpt": ">but, nobody uses it. I used to work at ByteDance and they alone employed I think more than 800 Flutter Devs. Douyin uses Flutter (the Chinese version of TikTok), Grab and Ebay use it, Alibaba and Baidu did too. Toyota and Volkswagen I think both use Flutter. Nubank I think is also a flutter app and they alone have like one hundred million some users. With the popularity in the Chinese ecosystem alone there's gotta b", "context": "former ByteDance employee", "use_case": "cross-platform app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 747367152, "item_id": 46710447, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46710447", "by": "agentifysh", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter is already very mature and can produce not only near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible) but can target desktop and even web applications.", "excerpt": "This is a welcome addition but why should Flutter devs use this ? Seems like it requires 32gb of ram! Also Flutter is already very mature and can produce not only near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible) but can target desktop and even web applications. I do wonder how much of a boost skip offers vs Flutter's mobile apps. Will give skip a try when dram prices normalize.", "context": "Flutter developer", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Skip Is Now Free and Open Source"}]}, {"label": "AI coding fit", "summary": "LLM coding agents are reported to work well with Flutter/Dart.", "quotes": [{"id": 781924720, "item_id": 48870295, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870295", "by": "dizhn", "date": "2026-07-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A surprise entry is Flutter/Dart. They are very good at it.", "excerpt": "I used TS and Go mostly with LLMs and they are very good at them. Python has been fine too honestly. A surprise entry is Flutter/Dart. They are very good at it. I think it's a mixture of types, the good tooling and focused documentation. All of these I run in a cli that has automatic LSP in it so that's a huge factor too. The agent is automatically told when there would be compile time errors as well as linter issues", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM-generated app code", "switched_from": "", "story": "Scarf has moved away from Haskell"}, {"id": 773562752, "item_id": 48347672, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48347672", "by": "mazinz", "date": "2026-05-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been happy with Dart/Flutter + Cursor + Dart MCP", "excerpt": "I have been happy with Dart/Flutter + Cursor + Dart MCP. Feels much more context aware than what I've experienced in other stacks and working with native features was far less painful than I expected. Still need to decide what to build, which is just as hard as it was before, but it's just faster to iterate.", "context": "", "use_case": "app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Is the State of App Development in 2026?"}, {"id": 782421601, "item_id": 48901350, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48901350", "by": "aabajian", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Claude writes all the code in Flutter.", "excerpt": "I shipped my iOS app without opening Xcode (well, I had to open it to get some provisioning stuff to work). I still use Visual Studio Code to kick off the simulator, but other than that, I use no IDE at all. Claude writes all the code in Flutter. IDEs are dead, prove me wrong.", "context": "", "use_case": "iOS app framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Building and Shipping Mac and iOS Apps Without Ever Opening Xcode"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Non-native feel", "summary": "iOS scrolling and editable text views fall short of native behavior.", "quotes": [{"id": 788541168, "item_id": 49283823, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49283823", "by": "phist_mcgee", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I could instantly tell without looking it up that it was a flutter app, because the scrolling felt non-native.", "excerpt": "They still haven't got native scrolling perfect for iOS. I used a big name app just today and I could instantly tell without looking it up that it was a flutter app, because the scrolling felt non-native.", "context": "", "use_case": "iOS apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 782399296, "item_id": 48899956, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48899956", "by": "busymom0", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Last I used flutter, editable text views was where it wasn't acceptable for me.", "excerpt": "Last I used flutter, editable text views was where it wasn't acceptable for me. On iOS, the default text view comes with a lot of built in stuff automatically such as cut copy paste, lookup definition, translate etc. Flutter's didn't have these.", "context": "", "use_case": "iOS app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Building and Shipping Mac and iOS Apps Without Ever Opening Xcode"}, {"id": 788587168, "item_id": 49286698, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49286698", "by": "sgt", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For stuff where design does not matter much, such as enterprise apps that \"put food on the table\", as you say, I use Flutter and still get a very decent result.", "excerpt": "For end user apps, I want them to look according to the OS, at least on Apple devices. That's what picky customers. For stuff where design does not matter much, such as enterprise apps that \"put food on the table\", as you say, I use Flutter and still get a very decent result. But with sufficient time and effort, proper native iOS/macOS wins every time.", "context": "", "use_case": "enterprise apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}]}, {"label": "Longevity concerns", "summary": "Some warn against relying on it long-term, partly because Google develops it.", "quotes": [{"id": 788496544, "item_id": 49281034, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281034", "by": "doodlesdev", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Flutter is an extremely enjoyable development experience I would recommend anyone I care for to stay away from.", "excerpt": "While I've used Flutter since Alpha, I've been away for a few years. A few things have shocked me in these release notes: how come Impeller still wasn't the default engine for all platforms? Also, why are they migrating to WASM if one of the core features of Dart is compiling to JavaScript? Finally, how come multi window support only get viable now, after four years having desktop support? Honestly, Flutter is an ext", "context": "used Flutter since Alpha", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788548768, "item_id": 49284298, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284298", "by": "GeneralMaximus", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It\u2019s a poor toolkit for building anything that must last for more than 3-5 years.", "excerpt": "Why would you not? I use Ableton, Figma, and Emacs regularly. I have a decade (or more) of muscle memory around these apps. If they suddenly decided to adopt the look, feel, and conventions of their underlying host platform, I\u2019d be very upset. If I\u2019m using Emacs, I don\u2019t want to use Cmd+S to save my files on macOS and Ctrl+S on Windows. I\u2019ve already memorized C-x C-s. I don\u2019t want Ableton to adopt whatever new design", "context": "", "use_case": "long-lived cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}]}, {"label": "Ecosystem gaps", "summary": "The ecosystem is called relatively weak and occasionally has breaking changes.", "quotes": [{"id": 775755108, "item_id": 48484694, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48484694", "by": "stevefan1999", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Flutter/Dart is catching up, but the ecosystem is still relatively weak.", "excerpt": "But Kubernetes, being a former Google project whilst donated to CNCF, is still one of the mainstream container orchestrator if not the biggest one (I believe we need to go over to supercomputers for that). Nomad is kind of dead and Apache Mesos is basically dead. Leaving Kubernetes as a natural moat, plus Google employees are still seemingly actively maintaining it. And also Go. While I'm not a Go guy (speaking as a ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Desktop spins up a VM without no way of stopping it"}, {"id": 788530368, "item_id": 49283148, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49283148", "by": "wiradikusuma", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You should try Dart/Flutter again, they've improved a lot.", "excerpt": "You should try Dart/Flutter again, they've improved a lot. - Dart. It's richer than JS/TS with stronger type safety, and seems purpose-built for UI. Fewer Dart developers than JS, but I'd argue those JS developers cannot be immediately effective coding React Native (Expo) anyway. - Emulated components vs. real native components. For multi-platform apps, this is actually desirable. These kinds of apps have their own d", "context": "Has used Dart and Flutter for years", "use_case": "multi-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}]}, {"label": "Slow feature progress", "summary": "A long-time user notes Impeller and multi-window support took years to arrive.", "quotes": [{"id": 788496544, "item_id": 49281034, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281034", "by": "doodlesdev", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Flutter is an extremely enjoyable development experience I would recommend anyone I care for to stay away from.", "excerpt": "While I've used Flutter since Alpha, I've been away for a few years. A few things have shocked me in these release notes: how come Impeller still wasn't the default engine for all platforms? Also, why are they migrating to WASM if one of the core features of Dart is compiling to JavaScript? Finally, how come multi window support only get viable now, after four years having desktop support? Honestly, Flutter is an ext", "context": "used Flutter since Alpha", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}]}, {"label": "Framework ergonomics", "summary": "Some find the stock framework's ergonomics poor and state management prone to overcomplication.", "quotes": [{"id": 733351632, "item_id": 45834477, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45834477", "by": "andriesm", "date": "2025-11-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I always thought the usability/ergonomics of the Flutter framework was slightly poor", "excerpt": "I always thought the usability/ergonomics of the Flutter framework was slightly poor, but the Dart language itself is pretty darn awesome! I also rolled my own reactivity interfaces, and made many shorthand functional wrappers for standard things I use frequently to debloat the GUI boilerplate. My stuff isn't robust enough to consistently live seamlessly alongside regular flutter code or to release for anyone elses u", "context": "", "use_case": "GUI app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Flutter_compositions: Vue-inspired reactive building blocks for Flutter"}, {"id": 788554464, "item_id": 49284654, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284654", "by": "0rzech", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love working with Dart", "excerpt": "Completely opposite experience for me. I love working with Dart (which IMO is _not_ \"worst parts of Java and Javascript (...) turned (...) into a language\", \"Terrible to write, terrible to read, terrible to use\" - quite the opposite, actually) and its toolchain, including Flutter. I find the architecture simple to follow, no need for \"either print apps as fast as possible or to emulate some Clean Code like behavior\",", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}]}, {"label": "Unsuited to web pages", "summary": "Bundle size makes it a poor fit for web pages, though acceptable for web apps.", "quotes": [{"id": 755456336, "item_id": 47216021, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47216021", "by": "matt_kn", "date": "2026-03-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter is absolutely not suitable for web pages, but for web applications the situation is different.", "excerpt": "Bundle size matters until it doesn't. Flutter is absolutely not suitable for web pages, but for web applications the situation is different. I was quite hesitant about Flutter web, up until around 3 years ago, the binary size being biggest concern. That was until I looked at Linear (which we used back then) and found out that the download is several times larger than whatever we were building with Flutter web, and no", "context": "", "use_case": "web applications", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Can we have Flutter-like portability without the bloated web binaries?"}]}], "who": [{"by": "faangguyindia", "context": "builds three free mobile apps", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644563", "date": "2026-09-10"}, {"by": "wiradikusuma", "context": "Has used Dart and Flutter for years", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49283148", "date": "2026-08-13"}, {"by": "sgt", "context": "Long-time Dart/Flutter user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49282877", "date": "2026-08-13"}, {"by": "Barrin92", "context": "former ByteDance employee", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281361", "date": "2026-08-12"}, {"by": "flax", "context": "indie app developer targeting Android/web/iOS", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49233381", "date": "2026-08-09"}, {"by": "refulgentis", "context": "wrote ObjC/Cocoa since 2006", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49147920", "date": "2026-08-02"}, {"by": "Zigurd", "context": "author of Android programming books", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46712882", "date": "2026-01-21"}, {"by": "agentifysh", "context": "Flutter developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46710447", "date": "2026-01-21"}], "tags": ["for cross-platform mobile apps", "for desktop apps", "for web applications", "for indie developers", "for AI-assisted coding"], "use_cases": ["app development", "cross-platform apps", "cross-platform app development", "mobile apps", "cross-platform app", "electron alternative for desktop apps"], "compared": [{"slug": "react-native", "name": "React Native", "co": 9, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "compose-multiplatform", "name": "Compose Multiplatform", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "electron", "name": "Electron", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "claude-code", "name": "Claude Code", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "kotlin-multiplatform", "name": "Kotlin Multiplatform", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "claude", "name": "Claude", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "sqlite", "name": "SQLite", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "kubernetes", "name": "Kubernetes", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 800342001, "item_id": 50021375, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50021375", "by": "matthewkosarek", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I work on Mir & Flutter, and I wanted to see how far I could push these technologies", "excerpt": "Hey all! Moonswing is a largely AI-coded desktop environment for Linux. It is mostly a fun exploration, rather than a production-ready project, so use it at your own risk. I work on Mir & Flutter, and I wanted to see how far I could push these technologies to give me a modern-looking desktop environment, entirely in one process and entirely in Flutter. This was made possible now that Flutter supports multi-window, wh", "context": "works on Mir and Flutter", "use_case": "building a desktop environment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Moonswing: A Linux Desktop Environment Built in Flutter"}, {"id": 784895414, "item_id": 49055963, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49055963", "by": "faangguyindia", "date": "2026-07-26", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The mobile app is in Flutter.", "excerpt": "I mostly use Go + SQLite for all the things I used to use Rails, JavaScript, or Python for. I find python django wastes too much resources, just look at memory usage. One of my web app backend (go) is serving approx 100 req/s right now and i look at pprof i see it's not bottlenecked by CPU but mostly IO and i love this. Writing concurrent code in Go is easy, the code i wrote 10yrs ago still compiles with no issue! Th", "context": "", "use_case": "mobile app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Some more things about Django I've been enjoying"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49280061", "title": "What's New in Flutter 3.47", "mentions": 12}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49643982", "title": "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48896665", "title": "Building and Shipping Mac and iOS Apps Without Ever Opening Xcode", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48479452", "title": "Claude Desktop spins up a VM without no way of stopping it", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48337409", "title": "Ask HN: What Is the State of App Development in 2026?", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50021374", "title": "Moonswing: A Linux Desktop Environment Built in Flutter", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 2}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1, "warn": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 9, "warn": 3}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 798925216, "item_id": 49932826, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932826", "by": "newswangerd", "date": "2026-10-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Flutter which supports Ubuntu out of the box with snap", "excerpt": "I suspect the bigger issue for Linux will just be the sheer number of distros to contend with. I use Flutter which supports Ubuntu out of the box with snap, but idk how well that is supported for other distros.", "context": "", "use_case": "app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS 27 is so buggy"}, {"id": 794619957, "item_id": 49663747, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49663747", "by": "phudyka", "date": "2026-09-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "One Flutter codebase for web, Android and iOS on Supabase.", "excerpt": "Location: France (CET) Remote: Yes, fully remote only (occasional travel/offsites fine) Willing to relocate: No Technologies: Flutter/Dart, Supabase (PostgreSQL, RLS, Deno Edge Functions), TypeScript, React, Next.js, Django, Angular, Docker, GitHub Actions, n8n R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: on request. linkedin.com/in/paul-hudyka, github.com/phudyka, phudyka.github.io Email: phudyka.dev@gmail.com Web and mobile developer. I ship produc", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2026)"}, {"id": 794558336, "item_id": 49659896, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49659896", "by": "de6u99er", "date": "2026-09-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I moved to Flutter which has been a great experience so far.", "excerpt": "LOL, good luck keeping feature parity for both code bases. I moved to Flutter which has been a great experience so far.", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"}, {"id": 794313010, "item_id": 49644563, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644563", "by": "faangguyindia", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We use Flutter; we rarely need to write native code.", "excerpt": "React Native is slow. Hermes VM doesn't even have JIT. If the majority of your app is native code and only a few places are stitched together via JS code that runs in the Hermes VM, then React Native is suitable for you. Look at V8 vs. Hermes performance. We use Flutter; we rarely need to write native code. We have three apps: Symbiote workout app, CalorieCodex, an AI calorie tracker app, and MacroCodex with 17,000+ ", "context": "builds three free mobile apps", "use_case": "mobile apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"}, {"id": 791673248, "item_id": 49479578, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479578", "by": "satvikpendem", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "So many, Flutter being one, as well as Rust GUIs like egui, iced, Dioxus Native etc.", "excerpt": "So many, Flutter being one, as well as Rust GUIs like egui, iced, Dioxus Native etc.", "context": "", "use_case": "Electron alternative for desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Any true alternatives to electron JavaScript?"}, {"id": 789579440, "item_id": 49348715, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49348715", "by": "realusername", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Personnally I use Flutter which has a very minimal use of their SDK.", "excerpt": "Personnally I use Flutter which has a very minimal use of their SDK. Basically enough to render inputs to a gpu accelerated surface. And I'd argue that this is a core OS feature that you expect on any modern OS.", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple announces changes for apps in the European Union"}, {"id": 789020465, "item_id": 49313779, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313779", "by": "Zigurd", "date": "2026-08-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "native splash screens for all the build targets of a Flutter app", "excerpt": "There are plenty of high value endeavors where being a superhuman knowledge remixer is right on target. But even capturing all of the knowledge is proving elusive. I use coding agents. I think they're pretty good overall. They save me a lot of tedious coding. For example I probably wouldn't spend the time to implement native splash screens for all the build targets of a Flutter app, but I'll have the coding agent do ", "context": "", "use_case": "app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI Isn't Outthinking Mathematicians. It's Out-Remembering Them"}, {"id": 788587168, "item_id": 49286698, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49286698", "by": "sgt", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For stuff where design does not matter much, such as enterprise apps that \"put food on the table\", as you say, I use Flutter and still get a very decent result.", "excerpt": "For end user apps, I want them to look according to the OS, at least on Apple devices. That's what picky customers. For stuff where design does not matter much, such as enterprise apps that \"put food on the table\", as you say, I use Flutter and still get a very decent result. But with sufficient time and effort, proper native iOS/macOS wins every time.", "context": "", "use_case": "enterprise apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788568800, "item_id": 49285550, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49285550", "by": "disiplus", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Honestly it's my go-to when I want to have a quick native app on any platform but dont want to bundle electron.", "excerpt": "You don't care what were you trying to build but for a quick me alone Linux app I used Flutter. Honestly it's my go-to when I want to have a quick native app on any platform but dont want to bundle electron.", "context": "", "use_case": "quick cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "ChatGPT Desktop (Codex Desktop) for Linux"}, {"id": 788558816, "item_id": 49284926, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284926", "by": "faangguyindia", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am glad I picked Flutter over React Native!", "excerpt": "I vouch for Flutter over React Native; we built https://macrocodex.app/ with 16,000+ users already! And it's completely free no ads, no subscriptions, or donations, for the public benefit of improving health and fitness. It's a guaranteed weight loss or gain app; results within 2-5 weeks! Don't believe? well just read reviews. We do not have Revenue, so no money to spend on marketing. OK so that's brief description o", "context": "backend developer building first mobile app", "use_case": "mobile app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788554464, "item_id": 49284654, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284654", "by": "0rzech", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love working with Dart", "excerpt": "Completely opposite experience for me. I love working with Dart (which IMO is _not_ \"worst parts of Java and Javascript (...) turned (...) into a language\", \"Terrible to write, terrible to read, terrible to use\" - quite the opposite, actually) and its toolchain, including Flutter. I find the architecture simple to follow, no need for \"either print apps as fast as possible or to emulate some Clean Code like behavior\",", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788550048, "item_id": 49284378, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284378", "by": "satvikpendem", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Working on all devices with minimal effort. That's what I use it for anyway", "excerpt": "Working on all devices with minimal effort. That's what I use it for anyway, anything else like a sound null safe language with Dart are just a bonus.", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-device apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788548768, "item_id": 49284298, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284298", "by": "GeneralMaximus", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It\u2019s a poor toolkit for building anything that must last for more than 3-5 years.", "excerpt": "Why would you not? I use Ableton, Figma, and Emacs regularly. I have a decade (or more) of muscle memory around these apps. If they suddenly decided to adopt the look, feel, and conventions of their underlying host platform, I\u2019d be very upset. If I\u2019m using Emacs, I don\u2019t want to use Cmd+S to save my files on macOS and Ctrl+S on Windows. I\u2019ve already memorized C-x C-s. I don\u2019t want Ableton to adopt whatever new design", "context": "", "use_case": "long-lived cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788541168, "item_id": 49283823, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49283823", "by": "phist_mcgee", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I could instantly tell without looking it up that it was a flutter app, because the scrolling felt non-native.", "excerpt": "They still haven't got native scrolling perfect for iOS. I used a big name app just today and I could instantly tell without looking it up that it was a flutter app, because the scrolling felt non-native.", "context": "", "use_case": "iOS apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788530368, "item_id": 49283148, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49283148", "by": "wiradikusuma", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You should try Dart/Flutter again, they've improved a lot.", "excerpt": "You should try Dart/Flutter again, they've improved a lot. - Dart. It's richer than JS/TS with stronger type safety, and seems purpose-built for UI. Fewer Dart developers than JS, but I'd argue those JS developers cannot be immediately effective coding React Native (Expo) anyway. - Emulated components vs. real native components. For multi-platform apps, this is actually desirable. These kinds of apps have their own d", "context": "Has used Dart and Flutter for years", "use_case": "multi-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788526032, "item_id": 49282877, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49282877", "by": "sgt", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've been using Dart and Flutter for years", "excerpt": "I've been using Dart and Flutter for years, but I've never ever met anyone who's seriously using Dart for backend. That would be a very niche thing and not popular with teams.", "context": "Long-time Dart/Flutter user", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788524656, "item_id": 49282791, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49282791", "by": "WA", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter: if you want a pixel perfect version of your app that looks similar on Android and iOS.", "excerpt": "Flutter: if you want a pixel perfect version of your app that looks similar on Android and iOS. Some quite popular apps use it and make a shit ton of money, for example Headspace. More here: https://flutterhunt.com/ React Native: totally viable, because core business logic is the same. If you want native UI elements and all the iOS Liquid Glass stuff, but don\u2019t want to have to completely separate code based, React Na", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform mobile apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788501776, "item_id": 49281361, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281361", "by": "Barrin92", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "With the popularity in the Chinese ecosystem alone there's gotta be a billion plus people using flutter.", "excerpt": ">but, nobody uses it. I used to work at ByteDance and they alone employed I think more than 800 Flutter Devs. Douyin uses Flutter (the Chinese version of TikTok), Grab and Ebay use it, Alibaba and Baidu did too. Toyota and Volkswagen I think both use Flutter. Nubank I think is also a flutter app and they alone have like one hundred million some users. With the popularity in the Chinese ecosystem alone there's gotta b", "context": "former ByteDance employee", "use_case": "cross-platform app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788496544, "item_id": 49281034, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281034", "by": "doodlesdev", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Flutter is an extremely enjoyable development experience I would recommend anyone I care for to stay away from.", "excerpt": "While I've used Flutter since Alpha, I've been away for a few years. A few things have shocked me in these release notes: how come Impeller still wasn't the default engine for all platforms? Also, why are they migrating to WASM if one of the core features of Dart is compiling to JavaScript? Finally, how come multi window support only get viable now, after four years having desktop support? Honestly, Flutter is an ext", "context": "used Flutter since Alpha", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788487920, "item_id": 49280495, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49280495", "by": "gumby271", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter is a nice stable platform, I'd highly recommend it.", "excerpt": "How are they limping? Flutter has completely replaced it's rendering engine across all platforms and they're building out major window management support on desktop platforms. At some point there's just not much exciting new stuff to add. Flutter is a nice stable platform, I'd highly recommend it.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 787734096, "item_id": 49233381, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49233381", "by": "flax", "date": "2026-08-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Flutter to avoid most of the iOS nonsense.", "excerpt": "You're right that to deploy an app to Apple's app store you have to pay them. The $100/yr access ransom is unavoidable if you want to have the option of making money there. But I've gone to great lengths to avoid the rest of the stuff that genuinely sucks about building for Apple: I use Flutter to avoid most of the iOS nonsense. I use Android Studio on Linux for the vast majority of my development. I target Android/w", "context": "indie app developer targeting Android/web/iOS", "use_case": "cross-platform app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tech sucks: You have to vote with your wallet, or nothing will change"}, {"id": 786366720, "item_id": 49147920, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49147920", "by": "refulgentis", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "switched to Flutter as my primary dev kit some years ago: it simply doesn\u2019t have the performance issues mentioned.", "excerpt": "It\u2019s a seductive idea, but it displaces who is responsible for the poor framework development onto users of the framework. It\u2019s easy to say they were just trying to be trendy and thus the real flaw was the trend is bad and the fault of worse devs than us (the young web devs mentioned) The thing that obviates that is the trendy stuff works, yet, SwiftUI doesn\u2019t. (source: I wrote ObjC/Cocoa as early as 2006, and switch", "context": "wrote ObjC/Cocoa since 2006", "use_case": "app development", "switched_from": "Cocoa", "story": "SwiftUI After 7 Years: A Story of Mediocrity"}, {"id": 786307890, "item_id": 49144243, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49144243", "by": "satvikpendem", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "currently for Flutter I use Loro", "excerpt": "Looks interesting, was looking for something like this as currently for Flutter I use Loro via flutter_rust_bridge as the CRDT data store, but it's not SQL so some things like big queries are annoying. How are you handling CRDTs in a SQL database? I thought those were notoriously hard as relational wasn't built for CRDT style syncing?", "context": "", "use_case": "app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Syncular \u2013 offline-first SQL sync with TypeScript and Rust cores"}, {"id": 782421601, "item_id": 48901350, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48901350", "by": "aabajian", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Claude writes all the code in Flutter.", "excerpt": "I shipped my iOS app without opening Xcode (well, I had to open it to get some provisioning stuff to work). I still use Visual Studio Code to kick off the simulator, but other than that, I use no IDE at all. Claude writes all the code in Flutter. IDEs are dead, prove me wrong.", "context": "", "use_case": "iOS app framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Building and Shipping Mac and iOS Apps Without Ever Opening Xcode"}, {"id": 782399296, "item_id": 48899956, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48899956", "by": "busymom0", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Last I used flutter, editable text views was where it wasn't acceptable for me.", "excerpt": "Last I used flutter, editable text views was where it wasn't acceptable for me. On iOS, the default text view comes with a lot of built in stuff automatically such as cut copy paste, lookup definition, translate etc. Flutter's didn't have these.", "context": "", "use_case": "iOS app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Building and Shipping Mac and iOS Apps Without Ever Opening Xcode"}, {"id": 781924720, "item_id": 48870295, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870295", "by": "dizhn", "date": "2026-07-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A surprise entry is Flutter/Dart. They are very good at it.", "excerpt": "I used TS and Go mostly with LLMs and they are very good at them. Python has been fine too honestly. A surprise entry is Flutter/Dart. They are very good at it. I think it's a mixture of types, the good tooling and focused documentation. All of these I run in a cli that has automatic LSP in it so that's a huge factor too. The agent is automatically told when there would be compile time errors as well as linter issues", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM-generated app code", "switched_from": "", "story": "Scarf has moved away from Haskell"}, {"id": 778280176, "item_id": 48642511, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48642511", "by": "sevenzero", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've recently built a Sudoku for my friends in Flutter", "excerpt": "Neat! I've recently built a Sudoku for my friends in Flutter as we were tired of ads showing up prior to games in most versions you can find on the Playstore. I gotta check out the the other games on this website too.", "context": "", "use_case": "building a Sudoku game", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Got sick of ads, so I made my own logic puzzle site"}, {"id": 778029392, "item_id": 48626837, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48626837", "by": "arikrahman", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've decided on using a Clojure/Flutter hybrid that gets the best of all worlds.", "excerpt": "I've decided on using a Clojure/Flutter hybrid that gets the best of all worlds. May integrate move from Bun to using Deno here https://codeberg.org/arik/clutter", "context": "", "use_case": "app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Deno Desktop"}, {"id": 776265857, "item_id": 48516616, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48516616", "by": "rjh29", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter is a lot more consistent, reactive, and all done in one way (Dart) and it supports hot reload natively.", "excerpt": "As a \"batteries included\" framework Qt is undoubtably amazing but I used it on a project recently and it struck me as dated compared to Flutter or React Native. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I had to write a lot of boilerplate C++ even when using QML. The layout engine feels byzantine. The state management is mostly manual. Flutter is a lot more consistent, reactive, and all done in one way (Dart) and it supports hot ", "context": "", "use_case": "UI development", "switched_from": "", "story": "The state of building user interfaces in Rust"}, {"id": 775778253, "item_id": 48486140, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48486140", "by": "stevefan1999", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Dart/Flutter is JIT on dev mode, and AOT compiled on production", "excerpt": "> Ever hear of a large K8s migration going well ...well, AI infra stacks are more or less k8s/cloud native, especially on the inference side. Nvidia GPU operator plus KubeFlow makes deploying models easy, and I did that manually as well using just the ollama, llama.cpp containers and especially vllm operator. I'm not sure about what's the measuring notation of \"large\" is, but OpenAI had a blog post about how to manag", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Desktop spins up a VM without no way of stopping it"}, {"id": 775755108, "item_id": 48484694, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48484694", "by": "stevefan1999", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Flutter/Dart is catching up, but the ecosystem is still relatively weak.", "excerpt": "But Kubernetes, being a former Google project whilst donated to CNCF, is still one of the mainstream container orchestrator if not the biggest one (I believe we need to go over to supercomputers for that). Nomad is kind of dead and Apache Mesos is basically dead. Leaving Kubernetes as a natural moat, plus Google employees are still seemingly actively maintaining it. And also Go. While I'm not a Go guy (speaking as a ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Desktop spins up a VM without no way of stopping it"}, {"id": 775627301, "item_id": 48476706, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48476706", "by": "faangguyindia", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "So I was forced to switch to Flutter on Android", "excerpt": "Most of my apps are now simply HTMX + Go + SQLite. I've found it's enough for most projects. One of my sites is image heavy and serves 10 TB of traffic per month. For this, I use the following setup: 1. S3 (I wanted reliable data storage) 2. In front of it, I have Cloudflare (with Tiered Cache enabled, which makes POPs prefer pulling from Cloudflare rather than the origin). I've set rules to cache everything on both ", "context": "", "use_case": "mobile apps", "switched_from": "PWA", "story": "Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight"}, {"id": 773562752, "item_id": 48347672, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48347672", "by": "mazinz", "date": "2026-05-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been happy with Dart/Flutter + Cursor + Dart MCP", "excerpt": "I have been happy with Dart/Flutter + Cursor + Dart MCP. Feels much more context aware than what I've experienced in other stacks and working with native features was far less painful than I expected. Still need to decide what to build, which is just as hard as it was before, but it's just faster to iterate.", "context": "", "use_case": "app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Is the State of App Development in 2026?"}, {"id": 773443057, "item_id": 48340191, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48340191", "by": "satvikpendem", "date": "2026-05-30", "stance": "compare", "quote": "isn't Compose Multiplatform basically Flutter?", "excerpt": "What are the mistakes in your mind? And isn't Compose Multiplatform basically Flutter?", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Is the State of App Development in 2026?"}, {"id": 761361121, "item_id": 47585070, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47585070", "by": "frail_figure", "date": "2026-03-31", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Limberly is built with Flutter", "excerpt": "Hey HN, I wrote an article about the negative effects of sedentary work, how I wanted to reduce them, and the solution I ended up building. The idea is not to scare you into doing something by quoting scary research numbers, but to increase awareness of the dangers that desk work is exposing us to, and to hopefully inspire people to take their health more seriously. I'd also love to discuss what works and what doesn'", "context": "", "use_case": "building the app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Building Limberly, Part 1: We're Not Moving Enough"}, {"id": 755456336, "item_id": 47216021, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47216021", "by": "matt_kn", "date": "2026-03-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter is absolutely not suitable for web pages, but for web applications the situation is different.", "excerpt": "Bundle size matters until it doesn't. Flutter is absolutely not suitable for web pages, but for web applications the situation is different. I was quite hesitant about Flutter web, up until around 3 years ago, the binary size being biggest concern. That was until I looked at Linear (which we used back then) and found out that the download is several times larger than whatever we were building with Flutter web, and no", "context": "", "use_case": "web applications", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Can we have Flutter-like portability without the bloated web binaries?"}, {"id": 747406112, "item_id": 46712882, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46712882", "by": "Zigurd", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter makes attractive UI easy.", "excerpt": "I'm currently using Flutter for a project. Considering I've been lead author or co-author on a few Android programming books, using a cross platform SDK was new for me. Dart is easy to learn, and Flutter makes attractive UI easy. I love to work on a big ambitious projects that really need platform specific implementations, but for the vast majority of cases a good cross platform SDK works well, and is a cost-efficien", "context": "author of Android programming books", "use_case": "cross-platform mobile app", "switched_from": "", "story": "2 years building a kids audio app as a solo dev \u2013 lessons learned"}, {"id": 747367152, "item_id": 46710447, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46710447", "by": "agentifysh", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Flutter is already very mature and can produce not only near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible) but can target desktop and even web applications.", "excerpt": "This is a welcome addition but why should Flutter devs use this ? Seems like it requires 32gb of ram! Also Flutter is already very mature and can produce not only near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible) but can target desktop and even web applications. I do wonder how much of a boost skip offers vs Flutter's mobile apps. Will give skip a try when dram prices normalize.", "context": "Flutter developer", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Skip Is Now Free and Open Source"}, {"id": 733351632, "item_id": 45834477, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45834477", "by": "andriesm", "date": "2025-11-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I always thought the usability/ergonomics of the Flutter framework was slightly poor", "excerpt": "I always thought the usability/ergonomics of the Flutter framework was slightly poor, but the Dart language itself is pretty darn awesome! I also rolled my own reactivity interfaces, and made many shorthand functional wrappers for standard things I use frequently to debloat the GUI boilerplate. My stuff isn't robust enough to consistently live seamlessly alongside regular flutter code or to release for anyone elses u", "context": "", "use_case": "GUI app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Flutter_compositions: Vue-inspired reactive building blocks for Flutter"}]}