Windows install

System requirements

To install and run Flutter, your development environment must meet these minimum requirements:

  • Operating Systems: Windows 7 SP1 or later (64-bit), x86-64 based.
  • Disk Space: 1.64 GB (does not include disk space for IDE/tools).
  • Tools: Flutter depends on these tools being available in your environment.
    • Windows PowerShell 5.0 or newer (this is pre-installed with Windows 10)
    • Git for Windows 2.x, with the Use Git from the Windows Command Prompt option.

      If Git for Windows is already installed, make sure you can run git commands from the command prompt or PowerShell.

Get the Flutter SDK

  1. Download the following installation bundle to get the latest stable release of the Flutter SDK:

    (loading…)

    For other release channels, and older builds, see the SDK releases page.

  2. Extract the zip file and place the contained flutter in the desired installation location for the Flutter SDK (for example, C:\Users\<your-user-name>\Documents).

If you don’t want to install a fixed version of the installation bundle, you can skip steps 1 and 2. Instead, get the source code from the Flutter repo on GitHub, and change branches or tags as needed. For example:

C:\src>git clone https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git -b stable

You are now ready to run Flutter commands in the Flutter Console.

Update your path

If you wish to run Flutter commands in the regular Windows console, take these steps to add Flutter to the PATH environment variable:

  • From the Start search bar, enter ‘env’ and select Edit environment variables for your account.
  • Under User variables check if there is an entry called Path:
    • If the entry exists, append the full path to flutter\bin using ; as a separator from existing values.
    • If the entry doesn’t exist, create a new user variable named Path with the full path to flutter\bin as its value.

You have to close and reopen any existing console windows for these changes to take effect.

Run flutter doctor

From a console window that has the Flutter directory in the path (see above), run the following command to see if there are any platform dependencies you need to complete the setup:

C:\src\flutter>flutter doctor

This command checks your environment and displays a report of the status of your Flutter installation. Check the output carefully for other software you might need to install or further tasks to perform (shown in bold text).

For example:

[-] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices
    • Android SDK at D:\Android\sdk
    ✗ Android SDK is missing command line tools; download from https://goo.gl/XxQghQ
    • Try re-installing or updating your Android SDK,
      visit https://flutter.dev/setup/#android-setup for detailed instructions.

The following sections describe how to perform these tasks and finish the setup process. Once you have installed any missing dependencies, you can run the flutter doctor command again to verify that you’ve set everything up correctly.

Android setup

Install Android Studio

  1. Download and install Android Studio.
  2. Start Android Studio, and go through the ‘Android Studio Setup Wizard’. This installs the latest Android SDK, Android SDK Command-line Tools, and Android SDK Build-Tools, which are required by Flutter when developing for Android.
  3. Run flutter doctor to confirm that Flutter has located your installation of Android Studio. If Flutter cannot locate it, run flutter config --android-studio-dir <directory> to set the directory that Android Studio is installed to.

Set up your Android 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.

  1. Enable Developer options and USB debugging on your device. Detailed instructions are available in the Android documentation.
  2. Windows-only: Install the Google USB Driver.
  3. Using a USB cable, plug your phone into your computer. If prompted on your device, authorize your computer to access your device.
  4. In the terminal, run the flutter devices command to verify that Flutter recognizes your connected Android device. By default, Flutter uses the version of the Android SDK where your adb tool is based. If you want Flutter to use a different installation of the Android SDK, you must set the ANDROID_SDK_ROOT environment variable to that installation directory.

Set up the Android emulator

To prepare to run and test your Flutter app on the Android emulator, follow these steps:

  1. Enable VM acceleration on your machine.
  2. Launch Android Studio, click the AVD Manager icon, and select Create Virtual Device…
    • In older versions of Android Studio, you should instead launch Android Studio > Tools > Android > AVD Manager and select Create Virtual Device…. (The Android submenu is only present when inside an Android project.)
    • If you do not have a project open, you can choose Configure > AVD Manager and select Create Virtual Device…
  3. Choose a device definition and select Next.
  4. 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.
  5. Under Emulated Performance, select Hardware - GLES 2.0 to enable hardware acceleration.
  6. Verify the AVD configuration is correct, and select Finish.

    For details on the above steps, see Managing AVDs.

  7. 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.

Agree to Android Licenses

Before you can use Flutter, you must agree to the licenses of the Android SDK platform. This step should be done after you have installed the tools listed above.

  1. Make sure that you have a version of Java 8 installed and that your JAVA_HOME environment variable is set to the JDK’s folder.

    Android Studio versions 2.2 and higher come with a JDK, so this should already be done.

  2. Open an elevated console window and run the following command to begin signing licenses.
    $ flutter doctor --android-licenses
    
  3. Review the terms of each license carefully before agreeing to them.
  4. Once you are done agreeing with licenses, run flutter doctor again to confirm that you are ready to use Flutter.

Windows setup

Additional Windows requirements

For Windows desktop development, you need the following in addition to the Flutter SDK:

  • Visual Studio 2019 (not to be confused with Visual Studio Code). For Win32 you need the “Desktop development with C++” workload installed, including all of its default components. For UWP you need the “Universal Windows Platform development” workload installed, with the optional UWP C++ tools.

Enable desktop support

At the command line, perform the following command to enable Win32 desktop support:

$ flutter config --enable-windows-desktop

For Windows UWP desktop support perform the following commands to switch to the dev channel, upgrade Flutter, and enable UWP.

$ flutter channel dev
$ flutter upgrade
$ flutter config --enable-windows-uwp-desktop

For more information, see Desktop support for Flutter

Web setup

Flutter has support for building web applications in the stable channel. Any app created in Flutter 2 automatically builds for the web. To add web support to an existing app, follow the instructions on Building a web application with Flutter when you’ve completed the setup above.

Next step

Set up your preferred editor.