Google and Canonical partner to bring Linux apps support to Flutter

Kyle Bradshaw | Jul 8 2020 - 8:00 am PT

Google’s cross-platform Flutter SDK has grown significantly since it first launched for Android and iOS apps, gaining support for the web, Mac, and Windows. Today, Google has announced that they’ve partnered with Canonical, the publishers of Ubuntu, to bring Linux desktop app support to Flutter.

Since its outset, Google’s Flutter SDK has aimed to make truly cross-platform apps possible from a single, shared codebase, with desktop platforms like Mac, Windows, and Linux having always been on the roadmap. Flutter began making good on the promise of desktop late last year with the preview release of macOS app support. Not long after, Google opened the door to collaborating with Microsoft to make Flutter apps for Windows 10, Windows 10X, and even Xbox a possibility.

Instead, today, a different collaboration has come to fruition. Google has partnered with Canonical — best known for Ubuntu, the most popular flavor of desktop Linux worldwide — to give Flutter developers the ability to create Linux apps. Flutter’s Linux apps support, available today for alpha testing, is able to craft “snap” packages of their apps, compatible with most Linux distributions, including Ubuntu. From there, developers will be able to publish their Flutter app’s snap onto Canonical’s own online Snap Store, one of the closest things Linux has to Android’s Play Store.

Canonical’s Ken VanDine has shared the company’s enthusiasm both for this collaboration with Google and for the future of Flutter apps on Linux computers, explaining that Canonical wants to be “at the vanguard” of Flutter development.

Canonical is making a significant investment in Flutter by dedicating a team of developers to work alongside Google’s developers to bring the best Flutter experience to the majority of Linux distributions. Canonical will continue to collaborate with Google to further improve Linux support and maintain feature parity with the other supported platforms.

With direct input and assistance from Canonical on the finer details of Ubuntu and Linux in general, Flutter’s Linux apps support could one day become one of the premier ways of creating apps for Linux desktops and laptops.