Flutter & Android | Open Source

Hitesh Kumar Saini  • Peerlist

• Superseded by package:media_kit.

• A Flutter package to integrate video/audio playback using libVLC.

• Supports pixel-buffer based video rendering/embedding inside application.
• Involves a thin C++ wrapper around libVLC to expose abstracted high-level API to Flutter.
• The native interop is done using FFI & async event callbacks are handled using SendPort mechanism.

• Over 400 stars on GitHub.

• https://www.videolan.org/vlc/libvlc.html
• https://dart.dev/guides/libraries/c-interop
• https://github.com/dart-lang/sdk/issues/37022

dart_vlc

• A Flutter package to add acrylic/mica/transparency effect to application's window.

• Uses Win32 DwmSetWindowAttribute (Windows 11) & SetWindowCompositionAttribute (Windows 10).
• Implemented in C/C++.

• Over 500 stars on GitHub.
• Used by a large number of open-source & commercial projects.

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/design/style/mica
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/design/style/acrylic
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/dwmapi/ne-dwmapi-dwmwindowattribute

flutter_acrylic

• Superseded by package:media_kit.

• A minimal audio-playback library for Flutter on desktop.

• Implemented using miniaudio & in C/C++.

• Got mentioned in "Announcing Flutter Windows Alpha" medium article from the Flutter team.
• One of the very first plugins made for Flutter Windows & served as an example to many developers.

• https://github.com/mackron/miniaudio
• https://medium.com/flutter/announcing-flutter-windows-alpha-33982cd0f433

flutter_audio_desktop

• "Plays & manages your music library. Looks beautiful & juicy."
• A music player capable of building music library by scanning files/directories & reading metadata tags.
• Effectively indexes music into albums, artists, genres & playlists based on metadata tags.
• Includes features like pitch-shifting, speed-change, volume-boost, lyrics, Discord RPC etc.
• Taskbar controls, context-menu integration & SMTC for Windows. MPRIS controls for GNU/Linux.
• Cross-platform: Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux & Android.
• Very strictly follows Material Design guidelines for UI/UX & animations etc.

• Uses Flutter & Dart for UI. package:provider for state management.
• Project is split into number of modules & packages for easier maintenance & unit-testing. 

• Capable of parsing 50 files/second & future caching.
• libmpv based music playback with strong codec support using dart:ffi.

• Over 3000 stars on GitHub.
• Over 70K lines of Dart, C/C++ & Java.
• Over 40K downloads across all platforms.
• Well-loved & used by users worldwide.
• Received coverage from various websites. A number of articles may be found about the project.

• https://harmonoid.com
• https://mpv.io/manual/stable
• https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/tree/master/libmpv
• https://m2.material.io
• https://m3.material.io
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/MPRIS
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/audio-video-camera/integrate-with-systemmediatransportcontrols

Harmonoid

• A Flutter & Dart package for cross-platform video & audio playback.

• Cross-platform: Windows, GNU/Linux, macOS, iOS, Android & Web.
• Exposes a simple API to integrate video/audio playback in Flutter applications.
• Uses libmpv (FFmpeg) on native-platforms for media playback capabilities.
• Supports hardware acceleration i.e. GPU utilization e.g.
  • Direct3D on Windows.
  • OpenGL on GNU/Linux.
  • METAL on macOS & iOS.
• ANGLE is used on Windows for OpenGL ES <-> Direct3D interop.
  • libmpv rendering API is OpenGL based while texture API in Flutter is Direct3D based.
• Capable of playing multiple 4K/8K videos simultaneously.

• Progress is being made to further improve performance e.g.
  • Implementing D3D11/DX render API directly in libmpv & eliminating ANGLE.
  • ???

• Over 500 stars on GitHub.
• Over 25K lines of Dart, C/C++, Java & Swift.
• Used by a number of open-source & commercial projects.

• https://github.com/google/angle
• https://dart.dev/guides/libraries/c-interop
• https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/tree/master/libmpv
• https://docs.flutter.dev/platform-integration/platform-channels
• https://github.com/microsoft/angle/wiki/Interop-with-other-DirectX-code

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Apart from the implementation challenges & complexity of the project, I spent major time on designing/deciding the architecture. A large part of implementation (80%+) is within Dart & shared between all platforms using FFI. This allows for:
• Easier testing.
• Easier maintenance.
• Consistent behavior across platforms.

Only video-rendering is platform specific (C/C++, Java, Swift based on platform; platform-channels), while major API (methods, event-callbacks) e.g. Player class is implemented within Dart, where C interop is easily done using FFI.

This made audio-playback work on every platform out-of-the-box. It will be helpful if other platforms are explored in future.

• https://github.com/media-kit/media-kit#architecture
• https://github.com/media-kit/media-kit#implementation

media_kit

• A Flutter package to integrate Windows taskbar's native behaviors & features.
  • e.g. thumbnail toolbar, progress etc.

• Exposes Win32 ITaskbarList3 API (Windows 7+) in a friendly interface to Dart.
• Implemented in C/C++.

• Over 150 stars on GitHub.
• Used by a large number of open-source & commercial projects.

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2009/brownfield/windows-7-taskbar-apis

windows_taskbar

• A Python library to fetch data from YouTube without official rate-limiting API.

• Involves reverse-engineering (+ occasional web-scraping) of internal YouTube API.

• Discontinued due to lack of time & interest.

• Over 1M downloads on PyPI.
• Over 500 stars on GitHub.
• Used by large number of open-source projects.