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How to install Flutter in Windows 11

Begin my journey in learning android apps

Sparisoma Viridi
10 min readJan 22, 2024

This story just another step-by-step guide or tutorial to install Flutter on Windows 11. There is a lot of article about it, even when you search only on Medium. Here steps adapted from Flutter website is presented with additional information from other resources. If you work behind proxy, considered to read similar story for the case behind company or organization proxy (Sparisoma Viridi, 2024a).

Inspiration

I begin to search inspiration using Google but only on Medium and the results are as given by Google search with keywords medium, install, flutter, windows 11 . Only the top 10 articles from Medium are considered for skim reading, where they are provided at the end of this story as a list, written in alphabetical order of pseudonym or first name if available.

Requirements

  • In order assure Flutter app to run, some requirements should be installed such as Flutter SDK, Android Studio, Visual Code Studio, and Google Chrome as internet browser (Jay Prajapati, 2023; CodeWithMasood, 2022; Raman Tank, 2023).
  • To run Flutter project in Android Studio Java Development Kit (JDK) should be already installed on your system (Karan Singh, 2020) due to some reasons (Ruqaiya Sattar, 2023) or you can just copy jbr files and paste them into jre on Adroid Studio folder if you encounter problem such as Unable to find bundled Java version (Jay Prajapati, 2023).
  • Additionally you might also need to install Windows PowerShell and Git for Windows (Ahmed Thaajwer, 2019).
  • There is also an advice that you can use only Android Studio without Visual Code Studio to use Flutter (Pratik Singhal, 2019). Or you just use Android Studio (Pranav Tk, 2020).
  • If you want to install Flutter without Android Studio, you still need to install Android Studio command line tools (Programming Advice, 2024) from https://developer.android.com/studio/#command-tools (Karan Singh, 2020).
  • Microsoft Visual Studio is optional and required when you want to use Flutter for Windows desktop development (Blup, 2023).

I believe above information might be confusing since I try to elaborate them from different resources, where people have different experience in installing Flutter.

System

  • OS: Microsoft Windows 11–10.0.22621 (64-bit).
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5800HS 3201 MHz
  • Core: 8 core(s), 16 logical processor(s).
  • RAM: 16 GB (15.4 GB usable).
  • Display: 2880 × 1800.
  • Drive: 300 GB free.

Above information is for documentation only.

Download installer

Visit https://docs.flutter.dev/get-started/install.

Click Windows since I have Windows 11 as my system.

Choose Mobile as it is recommended.

Scroll down to see system requirements.

It seems that my system might be able to run Flutter, 8 cores, 16 GB RAM, 2800 x 1800 display, and 300 GB free disk free space, hopefully. Scroll down to find software requirements.

Open Windows PowerShell to see the version.

Open installed Git Bash to see its version.

It should be sufficient for managing source code. Scroll down to find Flutter.

Choose second tab menu Download and install.

Click on the given link https://storage.googleapis.com/flutter_infra_release/releases/stable/windows/flutter_windows_3.16.8-stable.zip to download flutter_windows_3.16.8-stable.zip.

Wait for the download process.

Now the file flutter_windows_3.16.8-stable.zip has been downloaded and saved to Downloads on my system. Move the file to installer folder.

In my case it is M:\Installer. It is a best practice to keep the installer, at least the last working version, for further use, e.g. reinstallation without internet connection (Viridi, 2023).

Expand zip

C:\ create dev folder.

Press Windows key ⊞ and type PowerShell.

Press Enter key to execute it.

Type cd ..\..\devto change the current folder to C:\dev where the Flutter zip file is moved.

Type Expand-Archive -Path M:\Installer\flutter_windows_3.16.8-stable.zip -DestinationPath .to extract content of the zip file.

Wait for the process.

The installation is finished. Type tree flutter to view its directory structure.

It is all about 10,145 files, 2,724 folders, and 2.33 GB.

Update Windows PATH

Test that is not on the PATH.

Press Windows key ⊞.

Press Enter key.

Click Environment Variables… button.

Select Path and click Edit… button.

Click New button.

Type C:\dev\flutter\bin and press Move Up several times until it sits at the top of the list.

Click OK button. Also OK for previous opened Window. And again OK. Test again in PowerShell.

Now you have Flutter 3.16.8 is executable from everywhere since it has been noticed on the PATH.

Use $env:path -split ";" to view entries on the PATH.

Configure toolchain

It is assumed that you have already install Android Studio, when not you can install it by following these steps (Sparisoma Viridi, 2024b).

Follow the instruction and run Android Studio. Press Windows key ⊞, type android studio and press Enter key.

Wait for the process.

Click Next button.

Accept Standard option recommended and click Next button.

Click Next button. Following SDK components will be downloaded.

SDK Folder: C:\Users\Sparisoma Viridi\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk
Total Download Size: 1.93 GB
SDK Components to Download: 

Android Emulator                               345 MB
Android Emulator hypervisor driver (installer) 165 KB
Android SDK Build-Tools 34                     55.6 MB
Android SDK Platform 34                        60.3 MB
Android SDK Platform-Tools                     5.64 MB
Google APIs Intel x86_64 Atom System Image     1.44 GB
Sources for Android 34                         43.4 MB

Theses components are already different compared to given here.

Click Next button.

Change to Accept for android-sdk-license.

Then click android-sdk-arm-dbt-license.

Choose also Accept.

Click Finish button to begin downloading the components.

You can click Show Details to view details of the download process.

Wait for the process. It does not show the progress. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to open Task Manager.

It shows that Android Studio performs activities over Network, which is assumed to be the download process.

Unzipping the downloaded zip files.

Continue downloading.

After several times downloading and unzipping, an exception emerges.

Unzipping the last download.

Click Finish to end installation.

Set up emulator

Start Android Studio.

Click More Actions, where previously it was More Options as in here.

Choose Virtual Device Manager.

Find information about your device as follow, then click + symbol to Create Virtual Device.

Choose device definition or click New Hardware Profile, then find information about your device as follow, e.g. Samsung A12.

Fill information about your device as accurate as you can do.

After check options, click Finish button.

Now your device is listed under Phone category. Click Next button.

Choose system images you want or this time just click Next button.

Accept filled values and click Finish button.

Now your device in listed in the Device Manager. Click Start button ▷ to emulate your device.

It is starting Android Virtual Device.

Click Allow button.

Now you have the emulator of your device.

Click stop button □ to stop the running AVD. You can close the application using × on top right corner of each open windows.

Thanks CodeWithMasood, Programming Advice, Blup, Raman Tank, Pranav Tk, Karan Singh, Pratik Singhal, Ruqaiya Sattar (She | Her), Ahmed Thaajwer, and Jay Prajapati for the inspirations on installing Flutter. Last but not the least, also thanks to Shivam Kumar Nayak for comparison between VS Code and Android Studio.

Fluttter
Flutter Installation
Windows 11 Features

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Sparisoma Viridi

Written by Sparisoma Viridi

163 Followers

github.com/dudung, twitter.com/@6unpnp, codepen.io/6unpnp.

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