Flutter 3.3: A Dive into the Newest Update

Quick Summary: Flutter is quite popular among developers for cross-platform applications. Continuous updates released by the Flutter team make it even better with improved performance and features. Such improvements have also been made to the new 3.3 update of Flutter. This article covers these updates in detail and describes how overall development scenarios will change with this update. Keep reading to grab the details.

It is a wonderful time to be a part of the development industry. Constant changes and frequent upgrades pretty much sum up the name of the game. Major updates always excite us, and this time, we will be looking at the Flutter update.

If you are a developer, you might not be unfamiliar with Flutter – an open-source, cross-platform framework that transformed the world of mobile app development. And it has been continuously growing, both in size and usage of the ecosystem. Every day, over 1000 Flutter apps get released in the App and Play Store, in addition to the usage on desktops and the web.

It has been only three months since the last release Flutter 3.0, but the momentum has not slowed down. Every time the Flutter team releases a new version, it keeps getting better and better.

Finally, Flutter has launched a new version – Flutter 3.3.

Today, we are going to talk about the latest update that brings a range of improved features.

As with every new release, there is a lot to unpack. So, let's get onboard and explore the fine-tuned version of this revolutionary framework!

What’s New in Flutter 3.3?

Flutter 3.3 was released on 31st August, the first day of Flutter Vikings in Oslo, Norway. The updated version comes with a set of fixes, upgrades, and new functionalities in terms of framework, performance, desktop support, rendering layer, stability, and other similar scopes.

So, for your better understanding, what we are going to do is to focus on each of its improvements in detail as per the distinct scopes. Have a look at them below.

Framework Changes in Flutter 3.3

• Global Selection

An important feature that was missing from Flutter app development was the ability to pick elements on a web app with a single sweeping gesture. However, this is not the same with the launch of the Flutter new version. We now have a new widget called SelectionArea.

All you have to do is to wrap the Scaffold (your route body) with the SelectionArea widget, and you're good to go. This powerful feature makes it very easy to pick elements within a Flutter app. You can also select each of its descendants.

• Text Input

With this Flutter update, the framework's TextInputPlugin may now send granular text updates to enhance the support for rich text editing. Before this update, the TextInputClient did not reflect any delta between the old and new editing state. And this information gap gets filled by DeltaTextInputClient and TextEditingDeltas.

But now that you have access to these deltas, you can create an input field with stylized ranges that can change their size as you type.

Turn Your Application Idea into a Profitable Business Strategy

Make a Move

• Scribble

Have you ever wished that your Flutter applications could accept input from the Apple Pencil on an iPad? Well, it’s here! Jami Couch, a member of the Flutter Community, deserves the credit.

When using Widgets like TextField, EditableText, and CupertinoTextField, the Scribble functionality gets automatically turned on. The only thing you have to do is upgrade to Flutter 3.3.

• Trackpad Input

The trackpad input got some improvements with Flutter 3.3 as well. Apart from smoother and quicker control, it minimized the number of misinterpretations in particular cases. Moreover, it eliminates the inconsistent scrolling across the board.

• Material Design 3

The entire Android theming system has evolved since the release of Android 12 and the robust theme engine named Material You. Newer versions of Material Design are added to the Android OS as it continues to develop.

Flutter has successfully caught up with these upgrades as well. The Material Design of widgets like Chip, IconButton, and many variants of AppBar have changed with the Flutter latest version.

Widgets are gradually getting migrated to the Material Design 3 theme. The status of the progress is visible on Material 3 Github.

Here are some screenshots of the new, adaptive Material Design widgets:

Chip

IconButton

Medium and large AppBar

Package Changes in Flutter 3.3

• go_router

With the most recent releases, the Flutter architecture continues to get stable updates for a variety of platforms, including the web, desktop, and mobile. However, with more upgrades come more complexities. Navigation is one such complex area that often makes us scratch our heads.

But since the release of the go-router package, things have become a little bit clearer. The Flutter Team is in charge of overseeing the package, and it makes it way simpler to handle and navigate the deep links by offering a declarative, URL-based API.

Desktop Changes in Flutter 3.3

• Windows

Previously, developers had to change the Flutter desktop app version from a file that was specific to Windows apps. With the Flutter update, you can now easily change the app versions from the project's build arguments and pubspec.yaml files.

When you push an app update, this feature enables auto-update, so that end users get it at the earliest.

Performance Changes in Flutter 3.3

• Raster cache

By minimizing Dart garbage collection (GC) demand and removing copies, the Flutter new version enhances the performance of loading images from assets. Previously, the ImageProvider API needed compressed data to be copied numerous times while loading asset images.

But now, if you hire Flutter developers, they can directly load the compressed image bytes into the decoding structure, thanks to the addition of ui.ImmutableBuffer.fromAsset. This strategy makes changes in ImageProviders byte loading pipeline.

Moreover, because it avoids some additional scheduling overhead required by the prior channel-based loader, this process is also quicker.

To be specific, our microbenchmarks showed a nearly 2 times improvement in image loading times:

Rendering Layer Changes in Flutter 3.3

• Impeller

We are sure you have heard about the Skia Graphics Engine if you have been following Flutter since its beta testing phase. Skia was introduced in place of Impeller in Flutter 3.10 update and became the core graphics engine to render UI elements in applications.

The Flutter team introduced a new rendering layer named Impeller with the Flutter upgrade. This runtime is able to maximize the performance of hardware-accelerated APIs like Vulkan for Android or Metal for iOS.

You can anticipate even the silkier animation across your Flutter app, thanks to the launch of this brand-new graphics engine. As a cross-platform tool kit, it will definitely elevate the standard of expectations. More interestingly, Impeller does not require runtime shader compilation which is the primary cause of frame time janks in apps.

We Code Beautiful and User-Centric Flutter Applications in Record Time

Hire Our Team

VS Code Extension Changes in Flutter 3.3

Without any doubt, the VS code extension Dart: Add Dependency has made it exceptionally easy to add third-party resources to any Flutter development project. On top of that, the recent Flutter upgrade comes with extensive support to add multiple packages at the same time by using a comma and separating the names of the packages.

There’s a Lot More to Look for in the Flutter UpdateOf course, this is not everything that has changed in this frontend framework, but the best parts of it. Other key improvements include disabled iOS pointer compression, bitcode deprecation, fractional translation, etc.And as we always say, the Flutter community and team at Google have done a great job in facilitating an amazing development experience and improving it as well through regular updates.So far, we are super excited about Flutter 3.3 as it seems to move forward and offer bigger benefits to us all. This is high time you should leverage this tool and kickstart your app development task. Whether you want to start exploring the Flutter new version or need a helping hand in your project, we have got you covered.Reach out to our expert app developers and acquire the best tech talent!