anchored_popover

A Flutter popover that anchors to a widget, rather than to a screen edge. It opens on a long press by default, follows its anchor while the list under it scrolls, flips and clamps to stay on screen, and fades itself back out.

A row's actions in an anchored popover The same popover in a dark theme 

AnchoredPopover(
  popoverBuilder: (context, dismiss) => TextButton(
    onPressed: () {
      addToWatchlist();
      dismiss();
    },
    child: const Text('Add to watchlist'),
  ),
  child: MarketRow(symbol: 'BTC'),
)

That is the whole of the common case: long-press the row, a small card opens just above it, and three seconds later it fades away.

Install

flutter pub add anchored_popover

import 'package:anchored_popover/anchored_popover.dart';

Features

  • Long-press, tap, secondary-click, or purely programmatic triggers.
  • Optional auto-dismiss, outside-tap dismissal, and a scrim.
  • A controller and a GlobalKey state API for imperative use.
  • Screen-safe placement, with vertical flipping and edge clamping.
  • Anchor following inside a scrollable — or dismissal on scroll, if you prefer.
  • A theme extension, plus a reusable PopoverSurface.
  • Directionality, ambient theme, localisation, and accessibility support.

How it is positioned

The popover renders into the ambient Overlay — above dialogs, sheets, and anything that clips — but it is positioned against its child. Placement puts the popover's followerAnchor point onto the targetAnchor point of the anchor's box, then shifts it by offset:

AnchoredPopover(
  // Below the anchor, instead of above it.
  targetAnchor: Alignment.bottomCenter,
  followerAnchor: Alignment.topCenter,
  offset: const Offset(0, 8),
  popoverBuilder: (context, dismiss) => const Text('Below'),
  child: const Icon(Icons.info_outline),
)

Two corrections then apply, in order. If the popover would spill past the top or bottom edge and flip is set, the placement is mirrored to the anchor's other side — but only when that side actually fits, so it never flips into a worse position. Whatever still overflows is clamped inside the overlay's safe area plus screenPadding. PopoverLayoutDelegate is public if you want the same arithmetic elsewhere.

Pass an AlignmentDirectional for a side that should mirror in RTL. offset is never mirrored.

Triggers

PopoverTrigger.longPress is the default. A popover adds only the one recogniser it needs, so gestures the child already handles keep working: a row that is an InkWell with an onTap stays tappable.

Trigger Gesture
longPress A long press. What a row in a list usually wants.
tap A single tap, which toggles.
secondaryTap A right click, or a two-finger trackpad tap.
manual Nothing — the popover opens only through its controller.

Programmatic control

final popover = AnchoredPopoverController();

AnchoredPopover(
  controller: popover,
  trigger: PopoverTrigger.manual,
  autoDismiss: false,
  popoverBuilder: (context, dismiss) => const Text('Actions'),
  child: const Icon(Icons.more_horiz),
);

popover.show();

The controller holds the open state, so it survives the popover being rebuilt and reads back correctly the moment show() returns rather than a frame later. Auto-dismiss and tap-outside go through it too, so isOpen is never out of step with what is on screen. Dispose a controller you create; one the widget created for itself it disposes.

AnchoredPopoverController.open() starts open — the popover appears on the frame after its anchor first has a size.

Code that would rather not hold a controller can reach the state directly:

final key = GlobalKey<AnchoredPopoverState>();
...
key.currentState?.toggle();

Inside a scrolling list

By default the popover re-anchors itself as the enclosing scrollable moves, so it stays pinned to its row. Only the position is recomputed, not the content. Set dismissOnScroll: true for the other convention, or followAnchorOnScroll: false to leave it where it opened.

Theming

Register an AnchoredPopoverTheme on ThemeData.extensions to set defaults for every popover and every PopoverSurface in the app. Anything a widget sets itself wins over the theme; anything left unset on both falls back to AnchoredPopoverTheme.withDefaults, which derives its colours from the ambient ColorScheme.

ThemeData(
  extensions: const [
    AnchoredPopoverTheme(
      borderRadius: BorderRadius.all(Radius.circular(14)),
      padding: EdgeInsets.all(4),
      showDuration: Duration(seconds: 4),
    ),
  ],
)

PopoverSurface is the card the popover paints behind its content — a filled, rounded, shadowed Material with padding. It is a plain widget, useful on its own for anything that should match your popovers. Pass decorate: false to paint everything yourself; the content is still put in a transparent Material so text styles and ink respond normally.

Properties

Property Default What it does
child — The anchor. Laid out and hit-tested as if the popover were not there.
popoverBuilder — Builds the content, and is handed a dismiss callback.
trigger longPress The gesture on child that opens the popover.
controller internal Opens and closes it from elsewhere.
targetAnchor topCenter The point of child it is placed against.
followerAnchor bottomCenter The point of the popover put onto that point.
offset Offset(0, -8) Shift applied once the anchors line up.
autoDismiss true Whether it closes itself after showDuration.
showDuration 3 s How long it stays up when autoDismiss is set.
dismissOnTapOutside true Whether a tap outside closes it. The tap is absorbed.
dismissOnScroll false Whether scrolling closes it instead of moving it.
followAnchorOnScroll true Whether it re-anchors as the scrollable moves.
flip true Whether it may flip to the anchor's other side.
barrierColor none Colour of a full-screen scrim, which also absorbs taps.
decorate true Whether to wrap the content in a PopoverSurface.
screenPadding EdgeInsets.all(8) How close to the overlay's edge it may sit.
transitionDuration 120 ms Fade and scale in.
reverseTransitionDuration 90 ms Fade and scale out.
curve / reverseCurve easeOutCubic / easeIn Transition curves.
semanticLabel none Announced by screen readers when it opens.
onShow / onDismiss none Called when it opens and when it starts closing.

Accessibility

The long-press recogniser is not excluded from semantics: it contributes a long-press action to the child's node, which is how a screen-reader user reaches the popover at all. Give semanticLabel a value when the content is not readable on its own, and it is announced as a live region when the popover opens.

Because the content renders through an OverlayPortal, it is built in the anchor's own place in the tree — so Theme, Directionality, MediaQuery and your localisations resolve exactly as they do for child, and there is no OverlayEntry left to leak if the anchor is disposed while the popover is up.

Example

A runnable market list is in example/ — the app the screenshots above were taken from.

cd example && flutter run

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Libraries

anchored_popover
A popover that anchors to a widget instead of the screen.