Flutter Apps for Desktop?

October 2, 2026

Affine and Appflowy are having web and desktop apps.

not sure if those are done with flutter, but they are cool

Tl;DR

Intro

WHY Im writting this post: *bc *
What Ive learnt with it: Ive ended

Flutter is used in many places.

Actually even some smartTV apps from your favourite telecom provider might have been built with it.

At an ecommerce they were using Swift for the code base of iOS

Flet

Couple years ago I tried to do some Flet Apps with chatGPT, but the LLM knowledge was not there.

At least not to compensate for my lack of mobile app development (0).

How about now?

Is it there enought to create a desktop app to control the DJI Tello dron?

Well, the thing is that…

thing have changed

And models are so good that I was able not only to build a nice python cli wrapper to control the tello here:

git clone
uv run main.py

Oh…and in fact more than Python:

git clone dron-tello-flutter
cd dron-tello-flutter

flutter run -d linux

But also,

GPS BASED

ublox m8n

HGLRC M100 Mini How to Install and Setup a GPS on your FPV Drone (4K) - YouTube HGLRC M100 Mini GPS module - a small, cheap and accurate GPS module for all your FPV builds - YouTube

F9P?

Lora GPS?

Intro

https://flet.dev/

Build multi-platform apps in Python powered by Flutter

Because some time ago (pre vibe-coding age) I tried flutter.

And it was not that easy.

https://flet.dev/

Build multi-platform apps in Python powered by Flutter

Some flutter apps?

https://flathub.org/en/apps/de.wger.flutter Which I discovered thanks to https://apps.umbrel.com/app/wger

alt text

See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.wger.flutter

You can connect to your wger server

Ente | Docker Config 🐋 ↗

Because some time ago (pre vibe-coding age) I tried flutter.

And it was not that easy.

FlutterFlow

https://app.flutterflow.io/project

The Python Flet Project

The Site
The Source Code at Github
- License: Apache 2.0 ❤️

To write Flutter from Python, you can use the Flet framework. Flet is a Python library that allows you to build Flutter apps without having to write any Dart code.

To use Flet, you first need to install it using pip:

pip install flet #https://pypi.org/project/flet/

app = flet.App()

Once you have created the flet.App object, you can start adding widgets to it.

To do this, you use the flet.App.add() method. For example, to add a button to your app, you would use the following code:

Yes, Flet can generate static pages.

In fact, this is one of its main strengths.

Flet uses a technology called Pyodide to compile your Python code into WebAssembly, which is a binary format that can be executed in any web browser. This means that you can deploy your Flet app to any static web hosting service, such as Firebase, GH Pages or CF Pages.

To generate a static page from your Flet app, simply run the following command:

flet publish

This will create a directory called build that contains all of the static files for your app. You can then deploy these files to any static web hosting service.

Flet as Static Site: https://flet.dev/docs/guides/python/publishing-static-website/

Flet Samples: https://github.com/ndonkoHenri/Flet-Samples

Flet Features

https://flet.dev/docs/guides/python/packaging-app-for-distribution/ https://flet.dev/docs/guides/python/packaging-desktop-app/

Flet as a PWA: https://flet.dev/docs/guides/python/deploying-web-app/progressive-web-apps

Tinkering with Flutter

DJI Tello x Py

Python SDK and uv for the tello

NEW - GoPro HUD

Blender, CadQuery…

Flutter x DJI Tello

DJI Tello x Py

Python SDK and uv for the tello

Flutter Tello Flutter

Blender, CadQuery…

I got a tello some time ago

This year decided to use uv as pkg manager to control it better…

#git clone https://github.com/JAlcocerT/dron && cd ./dron && uv run main.py
#ssh -T git@gitlab.com
git clone git@gitlab.com:fossengineer1/dron.git

And shortly after I caught myself around flutter: This was not quite there yet thought

git clone https://github.com/JAlcocerT/dron-tello-flutter
cd dron-tello-flutter
#ping 192.168.10.1
flutter run -d linux

Flutter x GoPro HUD

I was trying GoPros overlay for long

#git clone https://github.com/JAlcocerT/Py_RouteTracker

Later, I tried this approach:

#git clone https://github.com/JAlcocerT/optimum-path
#cd optimum-path/overlay

Even with go:

#git clone https://github.com/JAlcocerT/go-karting

Just that the Go desktop app worked nicely for me at Ubuntu

But somehow my friend could not run it on W11

I did not debug much tbh

But just wondering if flutter would make this easier

Conclusions

Who cares that Pyston is no longer maintained when we have Rust and Go

FAQ

Flutter OSS Examples

Desktop Alternatives in Python

Targeting desktop apps instead of web:

Framework	Description	Ideal For
Tkinter	Built-in, simple GUI	Beginners
PyQt / PySide	Complex, cross-platform	Professional apps
Kivy	Touch apps across devices	Mobile + desktop
wxPython	Native-look GUIs	OS-integrated apps
Flet	Flutter-like experience for desktop & web	Unified apps

Desktop Apps Analytics

https://github.com/aptabase/aptabase

✨ Open Source, Privacy-First and Simple Analytics for Mobile, Desktop and Web Apps

Other F/OSS Libraries to create WebApps with Python

Some alternatives to FLET:

DASH
- Dash by Plotly is a Python framework for building analytical web applications. Dash apps are inherently server-side, with the frontend dynamically generated by Python code. Under the hood, Dash uses Flask as its default server
  - Flask SocketIO allows bi-directional communication server-client
Streamlit
- https://docs.streamlit.io/library/advanced-features/configuration#telemetry
Shiny with python
- https://shiny.posit.co/py/gallery/
- https://shinylive.io/py/app/#orbit-simulation
Taipy
- https://github.com/avaiga/taipy
- https://pypi.org/project/taipy/

Apache v2 | Turns Data and AI algorithms into production-ready web applications in no time.

Taipy Sensor Display

Source Code on Github

#https://github.com/Avaiga/demo-realtime-pollution
git clone https://github.com/JAlcocerT/demo-realtime-pollution #which i cloned

Great example: Taipy Demo of a Realtime Dashboard of Air Pollution around a Factory

What it is Gradio?

Build Machine Learning Applications Easily with Gradio in Python https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DGLznJorT8

https://github.com/NeuralNine/drawing-classifier

https://busterbenson.com/

Gradio
- https://www.gradio.app/guides/quickstart
- https://pypi.org/project/gradio/
Chainlit - Conversational AI in minutes
- https://docs.chainlit.io/get-started/overview
- https://pypi.org/project/chainlit/
Reflex (ex-Pynecone) - https://reflex.dev/
- Can also create static sites: https://reflex.dev/docs/hosting/self-hosting/#exporting-a-static-build
Panel - https://github.com/holoviz/panel
Pynecone - ANOTHER ONE IN MY PRIVATE AT LENOVO!!!!!!!
NiceGUI - Desktop Apps with Python https://github.com/zauberzeug/nicegui https://www.bitdoze.com/nicegui-pages/ https://www.bitdoze.com/nicegui-get-started/
- Under the hood, NiceGUI uses JustPy, which in turn is built on top of Starlette (an asynchronous ASGI framework) and other web technologies.
- library to write simple graphical user interfaces in Python we discovered JustPy. Although we liked the approach, it is too “low-level HTML” for our daily usage. But it inspired us to use Vue and Quasar for the frontend.
- https://nicegui.io/#examples
- Allows WebSockets
REST API (HTTP): RESTful APIs are widely used for communication between clients and servers over HTTP. They are well-suited for request-response interactions and are easy to understand and implement. However, they may not be the best choice for real-time communication as they are based on the request-response model, which can introduce latency and overhead for real-time updates. REST APIs are suitable for scenarios where real-time updates are not critical or where the frequency of updates is low.
WebSockets: WebSockets provide full-duplex communication channels over a single TCP connection, enabling real-time, bidirectional communication between clients and servers. They offer low-latency, high-performance communication and are well-suited for applications requiring real-time updates, such as chat applications, live dashboards, and multiplayer games. WebSockets can be more complex to implement compared to REST APIs, but they offer significant benefits for real-time applications.
```
  > Real time apps!

  ---> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzcfeL7ymbU
```
MicroServices - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL_j7ilk7rc

We have built on top of FastAPI, which itself is based on the ASGI framework Starlette and the ASGI webserver Uvicorn because of their great performance and ease of use.

JustPY
- JustPy is an object-oriented, component based, high-level Python Web Framework that requires no front-end programming. With a few lines of only Python code, you can create interactive websites without any JavaScript programming. JustPy can also be used to create graphic user interfaces for Python programs.

Python for Web Assembly

WebAssembly (often abbreviated as Wasm) is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine.

It’s designed as a portable compilation target for high-level languages like C, C++, Rust, and now, even Python, enabling deployment on the web for client and server applications. In simpler terms,

WebAssembly allows you to run code written in languages other than JavaScript on the web at near-native speed.

PyScript

F/OSS Libraries to create Apps with Python

TKinter
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlAB0X-RStM
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Miydkti_QVE
DearPyGUI
https://github.com/rawpython/remi
PyQT - python desktop apps -» https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjutoyfCl2c
- https://pypi.org/project/PyQt5/
Kivy - https://pypi.org/project/Kivy/
https://wxpython.org/

in go - https://github.com/gomatcha/matcha

Python Reflex - for WebApps

Run Python in HTML

PyScript - Thanks to Pyodide, WASM and Moderm WEb Tech

What it is Pyodide?

Pyodide is a Python distribution for the browser and Node.js based on WebAssembly.

Pyodide is a port of CPython to WebAssembly/Emscripten.

Pyodide makes it possible to install and run Python packages in the browser with micropip.

Any pure Python package with a wheel available on PyPI is supported. Many packages with C extensions have also been ported for use with Pyodide.

https://pyodide.org/en/stable/index.html

APP BUILDING

Dart & flutter (google)

https://blog.back4app.com/flutter-vs-dart/

Sample Flutter Apps

If you are into stonks and related apps:

https://github.com/jameskokoska/Cashew?tab=readme-ov-file
This application is available on the App Store, Google Play, GitHub and as a Web App (PWA).
Cashew is a full-fledged, feature-rich application designed to empower users in managing their finances effectively. Built using Flutter - with Drift’s SQL package, and Firebase - this app offers a seamless and intuitive user experience across various devices. Development started in September 2021.