nativeapi for Dart and Flutter #

Dart and Flutter bindings for nativeapi — unified access to native system APIs: windows, tray icons, menus, displays, keyboard, dialogs, storage and more.

🚧 Work in Progress: this package is under active development.

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Packages #

Installation #

A Flutter app:

flutter pub add nativeapi_flutter

A Dart app (command line, or any other Dart host):

dart pub add nativeapi

nativeapi has its own Point, Size, Rectangle and Color types. nativeapi_flutter converts them to and from dart:ui (window.bounds.toRect(), Offset(10, 20).toNative()), and leaves out the nativeapi names that Flutter already uses (Brightness, Color, Display, Image, ModifierKey, ShortcutManager, Size); import package:nativeapi/nativeapi.dart with a prefix to name one of those.

Quick Start #

import 'package:nativeapi/nativeapi.dart';

for (final display in DisplayManager.instance.getAll()) {
  print('${display.name ?? ''}: ${display.size.width}x${display.size.height}');
}

Custom window chrome #

With package:nativeapi_flutter/nativeapi_flutter.dart, wrap a custom title bar in DragToMoveArea to move the window by dragging (double tap to maximize/restore), and the window content in DragToResizeArea to resize from its edges and corners:

DragToResizeArea(
  resizeEdgeSize: 8,
  child: Column(
    children: [
      DragToMoveArea(
        child: SizedBox(height: 40, child: Center(child: Text('My window'))),
      ),
      Expanded(child: MyContent()),
    ],
  ),
)

Both widgets use WindowManager.instance.getCurrent() unless a window is passed. Moving via DragToMoveArea is not yet implemented on Linux.

Flutter-rendered secondary windows #

Window.create() opens a bare native window with no Flutter view in it. To render widgets in a second window, create it with Flutter's multi-window API and hand the controller to nativeapi:

import 'package:flutter/src/foundation/_features.dart' show isWindowingEnabled;
import 'package:flutter/src/widgets/_window.dart' as fw;
import 'package:nativeapi_flutter/nativeapi_flutter.dart';
import 'package:nativeapi_flutter/windowing.dart';

// Before WidgetsFlutterBinding.ensureInitialized(): stable has no
// `flutter config --enable-windowing`, so the app switches the API on itself.
isWindowingEnabled = true;

final controller = fw.RegularWindowController(
  size: const Size(320, 48),
  title: 'Toolbar',
);

// In the widget tree: fw.RegularWindow(controller: controller, child: ...)

final window = controller.nativeWindow; // a nativeapi Window, same id as WindowManager's
window?.titleBarStyle = TitleBarStyle.hidden;
window?.isAlwaysOnTop = true;

All windows share one engine and one isolate, so they talk to each other through ordinary Dart objects — no runner changes, no message channels. Flutter's multi-window API is experimental and internal to the framework, which is why the bridge lives in its own library, package:nativeapi_flutter/windowing.dart. It is written against the stable channel (checked with 3.47.5); stable does not offer flutter config --enable-windowing, so the examples set Flutter's internal isWindowingEnabled in main(). See floating_toolbar_example for a child window built this way, and browser_tabs_example and detachable_window_example.

Examples #

The examples are the flutter_* directories in the repository's examples/. Each is a Flutter app for one module; they resolve through the pub workspace at the repository root:

flutter pub get          # at the repository root
cd examples/flutter_display_example
flutter run

Contributing #

Development happens in nativeapi, which holds every binding and the code generator and checks out the core library as a submodule:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/libnativeapi/nativeapi.git

Files marked AUTO-GENERATED. DO NOT EDIT. are generated from the C++ headers in nativeapi. To change the API, send a pull request there; maintainers regenerate the bindings.

• API requests and native behavior bugs → nativeapi-core issues
• Bugs specific to one binding → nativeapi issues
• Not sure → nativeapi-core issues

License #

MIT