Flutter 2.5 What’s New

Flutter 2.5 is released on 8th September 2021. There are so many performance improvements in this release and we can easily track down performance problems in our app.

Basically, Flutter 2.5 performance improvements are targeting iOS. Flutter apps built on the Apple silicon M1 Mac run on the ios simulator. It supports Full-Screen Android applications and improves improvements in scrolling, MaterialBanner support, etc.

Dart 2.14:

Flutter 2.5 comes with 2.14, The new release has new features like new formatting to make cascades clearer, new pub support for ignoring files, and languages features, including the return of the legendary triple shift operator. The best thing about dart 2.14 is that this release creates a standard set of hints shared between new dart and flutter projects that come out of the box.

Android Full-Screen Mode:

The big change in flutter 2.5 is full-screen mode support for apps running on android. There is Support for various screen modes, which affect the visibility of UI overlays such as status and bottom navigation bar. The following new enveloping modes:

• Lean Back: Tap anywhere to display the system overlays.
 
• Sticky: Swipe edge to display system overlays.
 
• Sticky Immersive: Similar to immersive but framework handle to swipe.
 
• Edge-to-Edge: To show the application components it uses transparent system overlays.

Material You Widgets:

Google’s latest version of material design is Material You. Material You added new shapes, themes, and dynamic color effects.

Flutter 2.5 introduces new Material You support, including FAB size and more theming options. It’s not fully complete, still in progress.

Improvements in Scrolling:

Flutter 2.5 Another improvement is the addition of scroll metrics notifications, which provide notifications of scrollable areas even if the user is not scrolling.

MaterialBanner:

Another great contribution from the community is the addition of MaterialBanner support to ScaffoldMessenger.

Flutter 2.0 release, ScaffoldMessenger presenting snackBars at bottom of the screen which is to alert users. In Flutter 2.5, you can now add a banner to the top of your scaffold that stays in place until the user release it.

Android studio/IntelliJ:

This releases many improvements to IntelliJ/Android studio, starting with the ability to run integration tests.

Flutter devs can run integration tests throughout the project using the new IntelliJ/Android Studio plugin. Integration tests are whole-application tests that run on the device, live in the integration_test directory, and use the same testWidgets() functionality from the widget unit test.

To connect the test to IntelliJ/Android studio, add a run configuration that launches integration tests and connects the device to use the test. Running the configuration allows you to run tests, including setting breakpoints, climbing steps, and more.