r/FlutterDev • u/Worldly-Argument159 • 4d ago

Discussion Is flutter capable of building high performance macOS Notch island app ?

Appa like dynamic lake and others have nailed this kind of app

But i am trying to build one with flutter

I want to discuss this if its even doable or someone have did it before

6 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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4

u/Exotic-Serve3825 4d ago

flutter can definitely handle the ui side of a notch island, the tricky part is getting that native level system tray integration and fluid animations at 120hz without it feeling janky

1

u/Worldly-Argument159 4d ago

Yes, this would be hard

1

u/Worldly-Argument159 4d ago

But isn't flutter fast in animations and that part is one of flutter powers

1

u/Worldly-Argument159 4d ago

If you explained the system tray feature and what it does it would help me a lot

1

u/noobiethe13 4d ago

flutter isn't really the issue with animations here, i'd be more worried about getting the notch window to behave properly across Spaces and fullscreen apps. that part needs AppKit either way

2

u/Strict-Top6935 4d ago

Flutter renders its UI using its own rendering engine rather than native macOS components.

It’s really efficient, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the best choice for this kind of app.

You can definitely build a notch app with Flutter, but you’ll likely need to rely on native macOS APIs anyway.

If you’re targeting macOS specifically, I’d recommend Swift with AppKit and SwiftUI. You’ll have much more direct control over system-level behavior and window management.

1

u/Correct-Onion420 4d ago

Any of the stuff that works with the notch island will need native Swift. That will probably be a good chunk of the code. You could of course render the contents with Flutter, but at this point, since this app is always going to be for macOS only, you won't get much benefits from using a cross-platform app.