flutter_chromium_webview

A Chromium web view for Flutter on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.

Windows, macOS, and Linux bundle a pinned Chromium engine through CEF. Android uses the installed system Chromium WebView; its engine version follows the device's WebView updates. iOS uses a headless WKWebView implementation to comply with App Store rules.

Desktop pages use CEF off-screen rendering (OSR). Each frame is delivered to native code, copied into a pixel buffer and shown in Flutter through a Flutter Texture. This lets the web view behave like any other widget: it can be clipped, transformed, stacked and overlaid. Android renders through a native Flutter platform view with native touch and keyboard input. iOS evaluates JavaScript headlessly in the background.

Published version: 0.5.1.

Platform support

Platform	Status
Linux x64	Supported, validated on Ubuntu / WSLg
Windows x64	Supported, sandboxed CEF implementation
macOS	Supported, native CEF implementation
Android API 24+	System Chromium WebView; see Android requirements
iOS	Supported, headless WKWebView implementation
Web	Not implemented

Installation

dependencies:
  flutter_chromium_webview: ^0.5.1

Requirements (Linux)

• Flutter with Linux desktop support enabled.
• A Linux x64 toolchain: Clang, CMake (3.19+), Ninja, pkg-config, GTK 3 development files.
• Network access during the first build. The plugin does not ship CEF in the pub.flutter-io.cn package; its CMake build downloads a pinned, SHA-256 verified CEF minimal distribution (~100 MB) and builds the CEF wrapper library. Pre-download the archive and point the CEF_TARBALL CMake cache variable at it for offline builds.
• An X11 display (the plugin selects the X11 backend).

Usage

Initialize the CEF runtime once, before creating any browser:

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:flutter_chromium_webview/flutter_chromium_webview.dart';
import 'package:path_provider/path_provider.dart';

Future<void> main() async {
  WidgetsFlutterBinding.ensureInitialized();
  final cache = await getApplicationSupportDirectory();
  await ChromiumWebViewController.initialize(cachePath: cache.path);
  runApp(const MyApp());
}

Then place a ChromiumWebView in your widget tree:

class _MyAppState extends State<MyApp> {
  final controller = ChromiumWebViewController();

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
      home: Scaffold(
        body: ChromiumWebView(
          controller: controller,
          initialUrl: 'https://flutter.cn',
        ),
      ),
    );
  }
}

The widget disposes its controller when removed from the tree. Pass disposeController: false if you manage the controller's lifetime yourself.

The controller offers loadRequest, loadHtmlString, reload, goBack, goForward, executeJavaScript, and exposes currentUrl, pageTitle, isLoading, canGoBack and canGoForward (it is a ChangeNotifier). It also supports origin-restricted JavaScript channels, new-window requests, JavaScript dialogs and context menus that you render with Flutter widgets.

You never need to deal with CEF handlers, GTK, native textures or pixel buffers.

Example

See example/ for a small browser with back, forward, reload, an address bar, a JavaScript execution button, and layout-driven resizing.

cd example
flutter run -d linux

Limitations

• Rendering uses the CPU (software compositing). GPU acceleration is disabled.
• Standard CEF builds have no proprietary codecs (for example H.264).
• Native drag and drop and IME candidate-window positioning are unfinished.
• Once CEF is shut down the process must be restarted to use it again.
• The binary size of an app grows by the size of Chromium.

Packages

• flutter_chromium_webview: this package.
• flutter_chromium_webview_platform_interface: the shared platform contract. Not intended for direct use by applications.

Roadmap

• 0.1.x – stabilize Linux, improve tests and documentation.
• 0.2.x – Windows backend.
• 0.3.x – macOS backend.
• Next Release – SPM (Swift Package Manager) support for macOS.
• 1.0.0 – stable multi-platform release.

Contributing & license

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Released under the MIT license; CEF and Chromium are covered by their own (BSD-style) licenses, which you must honor when distributing an app.