Installing Flutter on Windows and macOS

Before you write a single widget, you need a working toolchain. Flutter's setup is straightforward once you know the moving parts: the SDK itself, your shell's PATH, the platform tooling (Xcode and/or Android Studio), and flutter doctor to tie it all together. Here's the full path on both macOS and Windows.

What you're installing

• The Flutter SDK — the flutter and dart command-line tools plus the framework.
• A device toolchain — Xcode for iOS (macOS only) and/or Android Studio for Android.
• An editor — VS Code or Android Studio with the Flutter/Dart plugins.

flutter doctor is your friend throughout: it inspects your machine and tells you exactly what's missing.

macOS

1. Prerequisites

On Apple Silicon (M-series), install Rosetta so some tooling runs:

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

2. Get the SDK

Download the SDK bundle from docs.flutter.dev, or clone the stable channel:

mkdir -p ~/development
cd ~/development
git clone https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git -b stable

3. Add Flutter to your PATH

macOS uses zsh by default. Add the SDK's bin folder to your PATH:

echo 'export PATH="$HOME/development/flutter/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc
flutter --version   # verify it's found

4. iOS toolchain (Xcode)

Install Xcode from the App Store, then:

sudo xcodebuild -runFirstLaunch
sudo xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

# CocoaPods manages iOS native dependencies:
sudo gem install cocoapods

5. Android toolchain

Install Android Studio, open it once so it downloads the Android SDK and command-line tools, then accept the licenses:

flutter doctor --android-licenses

Windows

1. Prerequisites

Install Git for Windows (Flutter uses it under the hood), and enable Developer Mode so symlinks and plugins work:

start ms-settings:developers

2. Get the SDK

Download the Flutter SDK zip from docs.flutter.dev and extract it to a path without spaces or special characters — a good choice is:

C:\src\flutter

Avoid C:\Program Files\ (it needs elevated permissions and has a space).

3. Add Flutter to your PATH

Open "Edit the system environment variables" → Environment Variables, and add this to your user Path:

C:\src\flutter\bin

Open a new terminal and verify:

flutter --version

4. Android toolchain

Install Android Studio, launch it to pull down the Android SDK, then accept the licenses:

flutter doctor --android-licenses

(iOS builds require a Mac — on Windows you'll target Android, web, and Windows desktop.)

Run flutter doctor

On either OS, this is the moment of truth:

flutter doctor

Work down the checklist until every line has a green check. A typical clean result:

[√] Flutter (Channel stable, 3.x.x)
[√] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices
[√] Xcode - develop for iOS and macOS      (macOS only)
[√] Chrome - develop for the web
[√] VS Code

Anything with a [!] or [✗] comes with a hint telling you what to install next.

Set up your editor

• VS Code — install the Flutter extension (it pulls in Dart too).
• Android Studio — install the Flutter and Dart plugins from Preferences → Plugins.

Both give you hot reload, debugging, and widget inspection out of the box.

Create and run your first app

flutter create my_app
cd my_app
flutter run          # pick a device when prompted

While it's running, edit lib/main.dart, save, and watch hot reload update the app in under a second. That feedback loop is the whole point of Flutter.

Bonus: pin your SDK version with FVM

On real projects, teams pin the Flutter version per repository so everyone builds identically. FVM makes that easy:

dart pub global activate fvm
fvm install 3.24.0
fvm use 3.24.0        # writes .fvmrc into the project
fvm flutter run       # runs the pinned version

Troubleshooting

• flutter: command not found — your PATH change hasn't loaded. Open a new terminal, and on macOS confirm the line is in ~/.zshrc.
• Android licenses not accepted — rerun flutter doctor --android-licenses and answer y.
• CocoaPods errors on macOS — sudo gem install cocoapods then pod repo update.
• Windows long-path errors — keep the SDK at C:\src\flutter and make sure Developer Mode is on.

Once flutter doctor is all green, you're ready to build. From here, the next stop is the language itself — Dart fundamentals — and then your first real widgets.