> Most people don't realize how many apps written in Flutter they use daily, simply because it's impossible to tell.
Flutter implemented its "native" looking UI widgets by literally having teams of designers eyeball the native designs and reimplementing, starting from drawPixel. This can't be done on a volunteer basis alone. Many open source attempts have tried this route and failed because they don't have the sheer designer resources needed to get there.
> Flutter implemented its "native" looking UI widgets by literally having teams of designers eyeball the native designs and reimplementing, starting from drawPixel.
Those widgets are then stylized wrong on every subsequent platform release, such that your iOS 18 phone might seem like it is launching an iOS 7 app.
IMHO if your goal is to have a cross-platform codebase act like the underlying platform, React Native is a much better approach. Flutter exists for people who don't intend to take on the effort of targeting platforms with specialized behaviors.
I’d much prefer they’ve gone with their own design system. People are already used to bespoke ones (web), badly done ones just remind me of scammy sites.
but flutter was probably sold internally as a trojan into ios dev experience. the carrot was multiplatform... and to sell it they needed to at least market that it was "true multiplatform" with native look. which is ironic since they go out of their way to make it pain to build to both in the same app
Flutter implemented its "native" looking UI widgets by literally having teams of designers eyeball the native designs and reimplementing, starting from drawPixel. This can't be done on a volunteer basis alone. Many open source attempts have tried this route and failed because they don't have the sheer designer resources needed to get there.
https://docs.flutter.dev/ui/widgets/cupertino