Flutter Flow: Set Up Your Mac for Flutter Development
Flutter

Flutter Flow: Set Up Your Mac for Flutter Development

2024-03-20
10 min read

Set up your Mac for Flutter development

I’ll walk you through the steps to set up your Mac computer for Flutter development. You can install the Flutter and Dart SDK through your IDE, but you will need to install additional tools to run your Flutter project.

Prerequisites

If you are using a Silicon Mac, you will need the Rosetta Translation environment. Open your Terminal application on Mac, type the following, and press enter.

Tip: To search for an application on your Mac, use the shortcut: command + space

sudo softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license

Download the Flutter SDK

Use the following link to download the Flutter SDK. macOS install

In the terminal, enter the following commands:

mkdir ~/development
cd ~/development
unzip ~/Downloads/flutter_macos_3.3.8-stable.zip

Note: The flutter version may be different depending on when you are reading this. In that case, type everything up to flutter_macos_ , then press tab to autocomplete.

Set the Flutter PATH

Setting the Flutter Path in your zsh profile will make sure it sets the path every time it loads.

Enter the following commands in your terminal:

echo 'export PATH="$PATH:~/development/flutter/bin"' >> ~/.zshrc
cat ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

The cat command is optional. It is used to show the contents of the file. Note you may not see this file when using finder because it is a hidden file (any file name that starts with a period).

Install HomeBrew

Homebrew is an application manager for Mac. You may use it to install the rest of the tools. Enter the following command to install Homebrew.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Install the Android SDK

You will need the Android SDK to build Android apps. The easiest way to do this is to install Android Studio. Download Android Studio & App Tools — Android Developers

Install Xcode

You will need Xcode to build iOS apps. You may get it from the App Store on your Mac.

Install Cocoapods

You will need Cocoapods to build iOS apps. Enter this command in the terminal.

brew install cocoapods

Install the Android SDK Manager

Flutter requires you to install the Android SDK Manager to build Android apps. Enter the following command in your terminal to set this up, but change your username below.

flutter config --android-sdk /Users/username/Library/Android/sdk

To find your username you may enter this command in the terminal:

whoami

Install Android Licenses

Enter the following command in your terminal. This is interactive, so you must agree to the licenses by typing the letter y and pressing enter.

flutter doctor --android-licenses

Install Dart

Dart is the programming language used to code Flutter applications. Enter the following commands in the terminal to install dart.

brew tap dart-lang/dart
brew install dart

Run Flutter Doctor

You can run the flutter doctor terminal command anytime you want to check if you are missing anything.

flutter doctor -v

Resources

Here are links to the documentation for the steps mentioned throughout this article. macOS install Homebrew Download Android Studio & App Tools — Android Developers Get the Dart SDK