layout	title	nav_title	permalink
page	Getting Started with Flutter	Getting Started	/getting-started/

Flutter currently supports developers on Mac and Linux, with Windows support in the works.

To get started, we need to set up Dart SDK:

• Install the Dart SDK:
  • Mac: brew tap dart-lang/dart && brew install dart --devel
  • Linux: See www.dartlang.org/downloads/linux.html
  • Windows: Stay tuned, Windows support is in the works.
• Ensure that the pub executable is in your PATH.

Once you have installed Dart SDK, activate the flutter command line tool and add it to your path:

$ pub global activate flutter
$ export PATH=$HOME/.pub-cache/bin:$PATH

Now we can use the flutter command to create a project named my_app:

$ flutter init -o my_app

This command creates a my_app directory that contains a simple demo app that uses Material Design.

The code for your app is in my_app/lib/main.dart. Execution starts in the main function, which uses runApp to run a MaterialApp widget. The MaterialApp widget is configured with a route map, with one entry for every screen of your app. In this case, there's only one screen, the home screen named /, which builds a FlutterDemo component.

To learn more about how to build apps with Flutter, please see the tutorial.

Setting up your Android device

Currently Flutter requires an Android device running the KitKat (or newer) version of the Android operating system.

• Install the adb tool from the Android SDK:

• Mac: brew install android-platform-tools

• Linux: sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb

  • If the version of adb provided by your Linux distribution is too old, you might need to install the Android SDK manually.

• Enable developer mode on your device by visiting Settings > About phone and tapping the Build number field seven times.

• Enable Android debugging in Settings > Developer options.

• Using a USB cable, plug your phone into your computer. If prompted on your device, authorize your computer to access your device.

Running a Flutter application

You can use the flutter command to run Flutter apps on your devices. First, change directories to the root of your apps (i.e., the same directory that contains the pubspec.yaml file).

To start your app, use the start command:

$ flutter start --checked
$ flutter logs

The --checked flag turns on type checking and asserts, both of which are quite useful during development. The logs command lets you see textual output from your app, including print statements and unhandled exceptions. To avoid confusion from old log messages, you might want to use flutter logs --clear to clear the logs between runs.

To improve your iteration speed, you can use flutter listen --checked instead of flutter start. The listen command watches the file system and automatically reloads your app whenever you make a change to its code.

Debugging

Flutter uses Observatory for debugging and profiling. While running your app, you can access Observatory by navigating your web browser to http://localhost:8181/.

Building a standalone APK

Although it is possible to build a standalone APK containing your application, doing so right now is difficult. If you're feeling brave, you can see how we build the Stocks.apk in examples/stocks. Eventually we plan to make this much easier and support platforms other than Android, but that work still in progress.