Flutter

Flutter is an open-source UI toolkit developed by Google for building natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. It emphasizes fast development cycles and expressive, flexible UIs. The project was announced by Google in 2017 and reached its stable release in 2018. Since then, it has gained broad adoption among developers and organizations.

Flutter consists of two main components: the Dart-based Flutter framework and the Flutter engine. The framework provides a reactive, declarative programming model built from a tree of widgets. The engine uses the Skia graphics library to render consistently across platforms. Apps are written in Dart, compiled to native code for mobile and desktop, and to JavaScript for running on the web.

Key features include hot reload for rapid iteration, a rich set of Material Design and Cupertino widgets, and a layered architecture that supports custom rendering. Flutter emphasizes high performance and pixel-perfect rendering by drawing widgets directly onto a canvas and integrating with platform-specific tooling. The framework provides a large collection of widgets, animation libraries, and a growing ecosystem of packages on pub.dev.

Platform coverage includes iOS and Android mobile devices, as well as web browsers, Windows, macOS, and Linux desktops. Flutter also supports embedded devices. The project is maintained by Google with contributions from the community, and it has extensive documentation and tooling for debugging, testing, and building release-ready applications. Flutter's cross-platform approach aims to reduce the cost of multi-platform development while delivering native-like experiences.