Flutter / Dart CLI #

This is a distilled version of the most useful command line options for Flutter and Dart command-line tool. Here are links for the full documentation for Flutter CLI and Dart CLI.

Create a project #

flutter create <project_name>
cd <project_name>

Replace <project_name> with the name of the project you want to create.

Use _ as separator between words in the project names.

Avoid spaces and weird characters in path names for your projects as it can cause strange issues when attempting to run the app.

Just running flutter create <project_name> will make a project that can run on all platforms supported by Flutter. You can create a project only for specific platforms with the --platform parameter. Possible platforms are ios, android, windows, linux, macos, web. Here are a couple of examples.

Flutter project for Android, Web and Windows #

flutter create --platforms=android,web,windows <project_name>

Flutter project for iOS/iPhone, Web and macOS #

flutter create --platforms=ios,web,macos <project_name>

Adding support for platforms to existing project #

Do you already have a project, but you need it to support additional platforms? Navigate to the root of your project folder in a terminal, then do:

flutter create --platforms=andoid,ios,web .

You can modify the list of as needed. It will simply recreate the project files with support for the specified platforms.

Recreating the project won’t make any changes to the application code. But, it could override any modifications you might have made to any of the platform specific files. For instance if you added permissions to use location service to Android manifest or iOS plist files.

Managing dependencies #

Package for Flutter and Dart can be found at pub.dev. The site is similar to npm and nuget.

Install dependencies #

When you clone a new project you need to install its dependencies. This can be done with:

flutter pub get

The command is similar to npm install.

Adding dependencies #

You can add a new dependency with:

flutter pub add <pacakge_name>

Where package name can be found on pub.dev. Screenshot an example of a package.

The package name for this package is flutter_bloc. So, to install it you would run flutter pub add flutter_bloc.

Pay attention to the likes, points and downloads as popularity can indicate that the package is of decent quality.

Dependencies you add will be added to the pubspec.yaml file. It is also possible to install dependencies by adding them manually to pubspec.yaml then run flutter pub get to download the packages.

Upgrading dependencies #

To upgrade dependencies to the newest version that match version constraints, run:

flutter pub upgrade

Running the app #

To run the app simply type:

flutter run

It might ask you what platform you want to run on. You can then hot reload by pressing r.

Run on specific device #

You can run the app on a specific device with the -d option. Here are some examples:

Run on chrome

flutter run -d chrome

Run on emulator

flutter run -d emulator

View a list of devices #

flutter devices

Example output:

Found 4 connected devices:
  ASUS AI2202 (mobile)         • NAXXXXXXXXXXXXX • android-arm64  • Android 14 (API 34)
  sdk gphone64 x86 64 (mobile) • emulator-5554   • android-x64    • Android 15 (API 35) (emulator)
  Linux (desktop)              • linux           • linux-x64      • Arch Linux 6.13.1-arch1-1
  Chrome (web)                 • chrome          • web-javascript • Chromium 133.0.6943.35 Arch Linux

The 2nd column contains the device ID you would use in commands above.

You don’t have to remember and out the entire device ID. You only need the first couple of letters. Just enough to make it unique.

Above I showed you could run on emulator by typing flutter run -d emulator even though the full device ID is something like “emulator-5554”.

Emulators #

You can launch an emulator with:

flutter emulators --launch <ID>

Where <ID> is the ID of an emulator, or virtual device. To run on an emulator with ID Resizable_Experimental_API_35, do:

flutter emulators --launch Resizable_Experimental_API_35

You can see a list of the emulators you have with:

flutter emulators

Building #

The output will show you where it created the files. You can add the --release flag to get a smaller more optimized bundle that doesn’t allow debugging.

The output for web can be uploaded to any static web hosting such as GitHub pages or Firebase. See Deploy to web.

For Android you can just copy the APK file to you device and install it by opening the file. It will give you some warnings because you are side-loading it.

With iOS it gets complicated. As far as I know, there is no simply way to just install from a file. You will need an Apple developer account and jump through a bunch of hoops to either get it on TestFlight or App Store.

Debug #

Correctly installed Flutter environment #

You can check whether the tools Flutter use are correctly installed by running:

flutter doctor

Fix cache #

Sometimes the packages or build cache becomes inconsistent. I can’t tell you what the exact symptoms of this issue are as it can vary. If you are getting strange compilation errors pointing to something deep inside a package, you might want to try:

flutter clean