Introduction to Flutter: Setting up Flutter for windows

Flutter is a simple and high-performance cross-platform framework created by Google for building Android, iOS, desktop and also web applications all with a single codebase.

Awesome, right?

But before we can use this awesome framework we have to setup some things on our computer and I am going to provide a step by step guide.

Setting up flutter
Setting up Android Studio
Setting up VS code
Setting up your device
Creating your first flutter project

Setting up flutter

Flutter is pretty easy to set up but install and run Flutter, your development environment must meet these minimum requirements:

Windows 7 SP1 or later (64-bit), x86-64 based
You must have at least 1.32 GB Disk space free
Windows PowerShell 5.0 or newer (this is pre-installed with Windows 10)
Git for Windows

Downloading the SDK.

Check the SDK archive page to download the latest SDK version here

Installing the SDK.

Create a new folder in C:\src and name it flutter (i.e C:\src\flutter)
Extract the SDK zip you downloaded into the the folder you created
After extracting the folder, you can run the flutter commands in the flutter console. To be able to run flutter commands on windows console you need to set up your environment variables.

Setting up your environment variables

From the windows search bar, enter ‘env’ and select Edit environment variables for your account.

In system properties click on environment variables.
The Edit environment variable window will pop-up. Under user variables check if there is an entry called PATH:

If the entry exist, click on the path entry and then click on EDIT button below the variables. The Edit environment variable window will pop-up. Click the option New and add the path to the flutter\bin folder for example C:\src\flutter\bin. Then click ok.

If the entry doesn’t exist, click on NEW button below the variables to create a new user variable named Path and add the path to the flutter\bin folder

Note that you will have to close and reopen any existing console windows for these changes to take effect.

Checking if installation was successful

Run ‘flutter doctor’ command in CMD to see if there are any additional setup needed to complete the installation.

C:\src\flutter>flutter doctor

Setting up Android Studio

Download and Install android studio from here.
Start Android Studio, and go through the ‘Android Studio Setup Wizard’.

Installing the Plugins

Start Android Studio
Open plugin preferences (File > Settings > Plugins ).
Search the repositories for the Flutter plugin and click Install.
You'll be prompted to install the dart plugin click yes.
Restart Android studio.

Setting up VS code

Download and install Visual Studio Code.
Open VSCode and go to the extensions section. Search for Flutter and dart and install it.

Setting up your device

To prepare to run and test your Flutter app on an Android device, you need an Android device running Android 4.1 (API level 16) or higher.

Setting up your physical device.

Enable USB debugging. Learn how to enable USB debugging for your various devices here
Windows-only: Install the Google USB Driver.
Using a USB cable, plug your phone into your computer. If prompted on your device, authorize your computer to access your device.
In the terminal, run the flutter devices command to verify that Flutter recognizes your connected Android device.

Setting up an emulator

Enable VM acceleration on your machine.
Launch Android Studio, click the AVD Manager icon, and select Create Virtual Device.

Note: If you do not have a project open, you can choose Configure > AVD Manager and select Create Virtual Device.

Choose a device definition and select Next.

device config.png

Select one or more system images for the Android versions you want to emulate, and select Next. An x86 or x86_64 image is recommended.
Under Emulated Performance, select Hardware - GLES 2.0 to enable hardware acceleration.

emulated perm.png

Verify the AVD configuration is correct, and select Finish.
In Android Virtual Device Manager, click Run in the toolbar. The emulator starts up and displays the default canvas for your selected OS version and device.

If you got it up to here Congratulations! You can now use flutter on your computer!