Google LLC today signaled that its Flutter mobile app software development is nearly ready to take flight, offering up its first “preview” release.

Flutter enables software developers to create “native” mobile apps for Apple Inc.’s iOS and Google’s own Android — in particular the user interfaces for the apps — faster than they can on each operating system.

Initially released a year ago and moved into beta test in February, the open-source software as of earlier this year had been used to create hundreds of apps. They include the one for the musical “Hamilton,” Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority app and Alibaba’s photo app, as well as critical Google apps such as its AdWords ad system and its Google Shopping Express manager app.

Today, with the “Preview 1” release at the GMTC Global Front-End Conference in Beijing, Google indicated it’s moving into the final stages before a full 1.0 release, though it’s not saying when that release will come. Still, Flutter product manager Michael Thomsen told SiliconANGLE, “We believe we’re ready for a broad adoption. We’re trying to signal our confidence in our stability and quality.”

The new release includes a number of improvements, particularly in what Thomsen called “scenario completeness” or polishing and fleshing out of various components to provide more of a complete solution for most major app development tasks.

Among other things, for instance, Google has improved Flutter’s video player package with support for more formats and reliability upgrades, and it has extended support for its Firebase mobile and web app development platform. It has also broadened support to include 32-bit devices such as older iPhones to accommodate continuing usage in less developed countries.

Moreover, the open-source software has gotten contributions of features by other developers. They include support for a hardware keyboard and bar scanners as well as widgets that can adapt for iOS or Android and a way to construct a series of connected animations.

Google also has launched a Flutter website in China to reflect its popularity there. In number of developers, it trails only the U.S. and India now.

Thomsen wouldn’t reveal how many developers overall are actively using Flutter, but he said that undisclosed number is up 50 percent since Google’s I/O developer conference in early May. A few other metrics: Flutter is now in the top 100 most-starred software distributions on the code repository GitHub. And some 150 global community events around Flutter in 43 countries have reached more than 21,000 developers.

Flutter is hardly the only software of its type, and it’s often seen as most competitive with the open-source React Native originally developed by Facebook Inc. as well as Microsoft Corp.’s Xamarin and others. But Thomsen said native operating systems are probably a more competitive alternative even though they’re only for their respective platforms.

Image: Google