Flutter, being a robust open-source cross-platform framework vastly utilized to create eye-appealing and natively-compiled mobile apps using a single codebase. With the help of this framework, you can effectively create solutions for multiple platforms such as web, mobile, & desktop. Flutter framework delivers a native-like appearance & feel to mobile applications on iOS and Android devices. Utilizing Flutter can be beneficial in multiple cases, such as flexibility, speed of app development, etc., and is loved by Flutter developers of flutter app development company india or across the globe.
To achieve the best outcomes from this wonderful framework, you must take care of the performance of Flutter app tuning during the process of app development itself. An improper optimized Flutter mobile application is likely to be slow and unresponsive, consume more power, and need more time and resources during the process of app development. This conflict will affect the user experience, ratings of the app store, along with the app owner’s budget. But, if you keep focusing on implementing the right performance techniques and strategies you can easily build a highly performant Flutter application that delivers a smooth User Experience. This blog discusses the best practices to follow for optimizing the performance of Flutter apps.
Optimizing Performance in Flutter Apps: Best Practices
Utilizing Widgets instead of Functions
This is a key technique to effectively optimize the Flutter app’s performance. While functions define the behavior and manipulate data of mobile apps, Widgets are the User Interface building blocks application users interact with. So, if you utilize Widgets in the place of Functions, your Flutter app will have an interactive as well as visually attractive User Interface.
Here are a few instances of how you can utilize Widgets in place of Functions in your Flutter apps.
Custom Widget Creation
Usually, flutter developers define a function for generating a piece of User Interface. Well, there is a better technique that can be used in place of this. Create a custom widget that encapsulates the UI and its behavior. This technique will let you reuse the widget in several portions of the mobile application and your code will become more modular as well as maintainable.
Use of built-in Widgets
If you don’t wish to build a custom Widget, you can simply opt for a huge variety of in-built widgets that Flutter offers. You can create complicated interfaces without having to write custom code if you use these built-in Widgets. Here are a few instances. The TextField Widget assists you to build a text input field. A scrollable item list is enable by the ListView Widget.
Combining Multiple Widgets
To create a more complicated UI, it is advisable to combine various widgets. For instance, you can utilize the Row or Column Widget for stacking or aligning several Widgets vertically or horizontally.
Breaking down Big-sized Widgets into Sub-widgets
It is truly a good practice to utilize stateless widgets wherever possible. During a state change, the Flutter framework redraws stateful widgets. This implies that app developers of a Flutter app development company india have to rebuild the entire widget. And, if the build tree’s size is large, you will require multiple resources to rebuild it. To address this concern, keep your widgets modular as well as small-sized for minimizing the build function’s size. So, break down big-sized widgets into smaller-sized sub-widgets.
Use Widgets instead of Functions, your mobile application User Interface will be more flexible & reusable. But, Functions are imperative to manipulate data and to define the behavior of apps. Therefore, the best practice followed by most well-trained, experienced Flutter app Developers is utilizing Functions alongside Widgets.
Optimize the Layout and Use “const” keywords
The Futter app’s layout complexity is one of the key factors that affect the performance of mobile applications. So, avoid utilizing nested layouts; use them just when required. Additionally, try to keep your widget-tree as shallow as possible.
Using “const” keywords is a well-known practice for the Flutter app’s performance optimization. While creating custom Widgets or utilizing the in-built Flutter Widgets, utilize the “const” keywords wherever you can. This practice will surely make your widgets immutable. It will lessen the requirement for rebuilding widgets leading to enhanced performance. Here is the reason! If you utilize “const,” the Flutter app development environment will rebuild just the Widgets that need updating. There will be no alteration in the Widget while setState calls take place & widget rebuilding won’t happen. Another most recommended practice is saving CPU cycles as well as utilizing them along with a “const” constructor.
Employ Asynchronous Programming Techniques
During the development of the Flutter app, developers must check whether the written code is running synchronously or asynchronously. By utilizing the asynchronous programming techniques, you can simply avoid blocking the main thread as well as this will maintain the responsiveness of your particular Flutter mobile app. But, it is quite challenging to code a Flutter application asynchronously; tasks such as upgradation & debugging become difficult to execute. To address this concern, utilize asynchronous programming techniques such as “Futures,” “async/await,” etc. For instance, utilizing “async/await,” Flutter app developers can write asynchronous code in a synchronous style which enhances the readability as well as maintainability of code.
Build and Render Frames in 16 ms
Creating as well as rendering frames in your mobile application within 16ms is another common technique of Flutter apps performance optimization. The tasks of building and rendering need 2 separate threads. For each of these tasks, you’ve 16ms. But, to avoid latency as well as enhance the performance of mobile applications, you have to acquire this 16ms to 8ms. This implies that, developing the frame within 8 ms as well as rendering it within 8 ms so that the total time does not exceed 16 ms.
To summarize, build & render the frames within 16ms in a 60 Hz display. Many of you might be surprised whether minimizing the time can hamper the quality of the display. The reply is “NO.” Bringing down the total time of frame development and rendering to 16ms won’t lead to any visibility difference. Instead, it will enhance the battery life of devices as well as prevent thermal concerns. Additionally, this approach will expedite the performance of mobile apps considerably on smaller-sized devices. The animations of your Flutter app will be smooth as well as your valuable users will experience a pleasurable User Experience.
Limit Opacity Utilization
Cut down the utilization of the Opacity widget & Clipping to a bare minimum. The utilization of Opacity, causes the widget to rebuild itself after each frame. This can hamper the Flutter apps’ performance, and more so if animations are there. To ignore such a scenario, you can simply apply Opacity to an image directly, rather than using the Opacity widget. This will enhance the speed of tasks as well as reduce resource use.
The Opacity Widget lets you hide another widget on the screen by concluding inside it. So, for hiding a particular widget, many utilize the Opacity widget. The practice of hiding a widget is common in PL such as Objective-C. But, in Flutter, the approach of hiding a widget on screen for quite a long time turns out to be a very expensive affair. For this approach, there is a more cost-efficient substitute. You can simply rebuild the widget rather than hiding it using a methodology that lets you reconstruct it without requiring the Text widget. And, if you want to display that widget on the screen you can utilize the Visibility widget rather than Opacity. It doesn’t involve any fractional opacity values. Visibility has 2 states- either visible or invisible.
Reduce the Size of an App
Mobile app development teams often end up utilizing multiple widgets, packages, codes, as well as scripts during the process of app development. However, storing such a humongous amount of data can be detrimental to the performance of mobile applications as it consumes high memory.
This concern can be resolved by utilizing the tool called Gradle. This tool assists you to reduce the size of an application. Furthermore, for this purpose, you can simply utilize the Google-introduced packaging system. This packaging system lets you develop Android application bundles. With mobile application bundles, you can simply download the original code from Google Play Store. Here, you will find mobile applications that are compatible with the platform architecture as well as the device.
Limited Network Requests
Higher the network requests the worse the Flutter app’s performance. So, try to minimize the network requests. You can utilize caching mechanisms like StreamBuilder or FutureBuilder for ignoring repeated network requests.
Utilize Effective Data Structures
Avoid utilizing huge data structures like maps or lists, while you require to handle large chunks of data in your Flutter mobile app. Instead, consider utilizing efficient data structures like LinkedHashMap or Set. In terms of performance as well as memory usage, these data structures fare way better.
Optimize Images
If images are huge-sized and aren’t properly optimized, they can turn out to be sources of performance woes. Hence, compress images as well as size them properly. For this, you can utilize tools such as “flutter_svg.” This tool will assist you to render graphics rather than rasterized images.
Utilize Flutter Performance Tools
Flutter framework comes with several performance optimization tools. These performance optimization tools enable Flutter app developers to examine as well as boost the Flutter apps’ performance. For example, the Flutter DevTools lets you analyze as well as visualize the performance of your mobile application based on metrics such as memory usage, CPU utilization, frame rate, etc.
Carry out App Profiling
Flutter app performance testing is important. So, for identifying performance concerns in the Dart code, just profile your Flutter mobile application at regular intervals. A few examples of such concerns are i/o, bandwidth, the lack of stuttering, etc. Fix the concerns at the earliest. Tools such as Flutter Observatory will assist you to identify costly operations as well as optimize them.
The Final Takes:
It’s crucial to optimize the performance of your Flutter app. An optimized Flutter app ensures device compatibility, improves app store rankings, minimizes app development costs, provides a great UX, and conserves battery life. The above Flutter app performance optimization techniques are popular practices that are trusted by countless Flutter app developers worldwide. So, connect with a reliable and trusted Flutter app development company India. A dedicated and well-trained Flutter app developer of a proficient agency will execute your project following the best practices as well as smart strategies to deliver you a highly performant Flutter end product.
