Flutter Flash News 02/2026

We took a small break to recharge, but now we're back with a summary of news and interesting projects from the world of Flutter and Dart.

Let's get to it.

Flutter 3.38

The latest stable version, 3.38, has been with us since November—as always, you can find a complete list of new features in the article from the Flutter team —> What’s new in Flutter 3.38.

Most exciting for us? Definitely Dot Shorthands!

At first, we had mixed feelings about whether .dot shorthands could be "abused" and whether relatively simple code would magically become short yet unreadable.

Yes, I'm talking about a typical example like this: final Another a = .new(.new(version: .new('val')))

Luckily, our doubts quickly vanished. We enjoy using this new feature, and it helps Flutter widgets remain readable without unnecessary repetition of certain keywords.

As big fans of DCM, we helped with lints that will keep .dot shorthands in check – more information here: A Deeper Look at Dart's Dot Shorthands (and Their Hidden Complexity For Your Flutter Projects).

The avoid-nested-shorthands rule is definitely worth mentioning, as it prevents the illegibility of nested shorthands.

Flutter Zero – the diet Coke of Flutter

Matěj Knopp is working on an interesting experimental project called Flutter Zero. In his words: "Zero calorie Flutter, no UI, Skia or Impeller included." In other words, a slimmed-down version of Flutter, stripped down to the bare minimum.

More specific details can be found in the repository – flutter_zero. For curious developers and tinkerers, this is certainly a promising undertaking.

Dart news

The Dart team is constantly working on new specifications and improvements. In addition to the long-awaited "Primary constructors," which we’re still patiently waiting for, the team is also working on smaller but valuable improvements.

Check out what the Dart team is working on —> Language-funnel.

Private named constructors

Dart will support private named parameters in constructors. This will be a minor syntax sugar that will save a few lines of code. For us, it's a small but welcome change.

In the future, the code:

class House {
int? _windows;
int? _bedrooms;
int? _swimmingPools;

House({
int? windows,
int? bedrooms,
int? swimmingPools,
}): _windows = windows,
_bedrooms = bedrooms,
_swimmingPools =swimmingPools;

class House {
int? _windows;
int? _bedrooms;
int? _swimmingPools;

House({
int? windows,
int? bedrooms,
int? swimmingPools,
}): _windows = windows,
_bedrooms = bedrooms,
_swimmingPools =swimmingPools;

class House {
int? _windows;
int? _bedrooms;
int? _swimmingPools;

House({
int? windows,
int? bedrooms,
int? swimmingPools,
}): _windows = windows,
_bedrooms = bedrooms,
_swimmingPools =swimmingPools;

will be rewritten to:

class House {
int? _windows;
int? _bedrooms;
int? _swimmingPools;

House({this._windows, this._bedrooms, this._swimmingPools});
}

class House {
int? _windows;
int? _bedrooms;
int? _swimmingPools;

House({this._windows, this._bedrooms, this._swimmingPools});
}

class House {
int? _windows;
int? _bedrooms;
int? _swimmingPools;

House({this._windows, this._bedrooms, this._swimmingPools});
}

Individual fields still retain their visibility—privacy—but we don't have to obstrusely repeat the argument and assignment in constructors.

Build runner on steroids

In recent months, D. Morgan (@davidmorgan) has been working on optimizing and speeding up build_runner.

The latest version has saved us a lot of time in our projects. We recommend everyone to upgrade to the latest version and give it a spin.

Among other things, you can experimentally try the --workspace flag, which enables support for running build_runner across the entire workspace.

And that's all for today!

See you soon with more Flutter news. 👋