Google LLC today pushed out a major update to its open-source Flutter framework that’s used to build applications that can run on multiple computing platforms.

The company has also updated Dart, a client-optimized programming language created by Google that’s used to write mobile, desktop, server and web applications.

Flutter is a framework that’s used by developers to build “native” apps on multiple operating systems such as Android, iOS, Windows and MacOS. The idea is that they can write their apps just once using Google’s Dart programming language and have them run perfectly across all of those platforms, without needing to tinker the code for each version.

The framework is designed to enable what Google calls “ambient computing.” That’s where people can access their favorite apps and services from any location, be it at home or work, on any kind of device, using a consistent set of methods and commands.

Much of Google’s work in the Flutter 1.17 release has been on improving its overall performance and memory, Flutter product manager Chris Sells wrote in a blog post announcing the update. He said developers will see the benefits of this work immediately with much faster animations, smaller app sizes and lower memory use.

“In this release, you’ll see a 20%-37% speedup for the default navigation case,” Sells wrote. “You’ll also see up to a 40% reduction in CPU/GPU usage for simple iOS animations, depending on the hardware.”

The release also brings a 70% memory reduction in fast scrolling through large images, which helps to ensure a noticeable boost in performance. In addition, applications built with Flutter will see considerable size reductions as a result of several new fixes. For example, the Flutter Gallery app sample on Android is now just 8.1 megabytes in size, down from 9.6MB at the end of last year, an 18% reduction.

Other notable updates include improved support for Metal on iOS, which is Apple Inc.’s recommend graphics API, and new Material widgets such as NavigationRail, which is used by developers to add responsive app navigation models to their apps.

As for Dart 2.8, Google said application developers should see much faster performance when retrieving packages and their dependencies from the pub.dev repository. They can also access a new tool called pub outdated, which helps to keep packages current by automatically determining which ones need to be updated.

Dart 2.8 also adds a set of small breaking changes in the Dart language and libraries that lay the groundwork for its upcoming null safety feature, which will add optimizations to help developers build faster and more stable user interfaces.

The Flutter 1.17 and Dart 2.8 software development kits are available now.

Image: Google