flutter_print

A Flutter plugin focusing on print, that's it.

PDF and image files print on every platform, with the print options applied. Text documents are rendered natively on macOS and Windows. Other file types are handled differently on each platform, see File types.

Widgets are rendered as an image in a single-page PDF.

Print preview on Windows Print preview on Android

Usage

Basic print

import 'package:flutter_print/flutter_print.dart';

// List available printers
final List<PrinterInfo> printers = await FlutterPrint.listPrinters();

// Print with default settings
await FlutterPrint.print('/path/to/document.pdf');

// Let the user review settings in the system print dialog first
await FlutterPrint.printPreview('/path/to/document.pdf', context: context);

// On the web `filePath` must be a URL accessible from the page's origin, or a
// Blob URL. The browser's print dialog (which includes a preview) is always
// shown.
await FlutterPrint.print('https://example.com/document.pdf');

await FlutterPrint.print(
  '/path/to/document.pdf',
  options: PrintOptions(
    // Target a specific printer (uses system default when omitted).
    printerAddress: printers.first.address,

    // Use a named page size preset.
    // Or via PageSize(name: '', width: w, height: h)
    pageSize: PaperSizes.a4,

    // Margins in millimetres.
    margins: PageMargins(top: 10, bottom: 10, left: 15, right: 15),

    copies: 2,
    landscape: false,
    color: true,
    duplexMode: DuplexMode.longEdge,

    // Pages 1–3 and 5.
    pageRanges: [PageRange(start: 1, end: 3), PageRange(start: 5, end: 5)],
  ),
);

Page ranges are 1-based and inclusive. They are sorted and merged before printing; an invalid range throws an ArgumentError, and a selection that matches no page fails with INVALID_PAGE_RANGE.

Widget print

Render any Flutter widget off-screen and print it directly — no file needed. printWidget rasterises the widget into a single-page PDF and sends it to the printer, and printWidgetPreview opens it in the print dialog instead. previewWidget returns PNG bytes you can display with Image.memory before printing.

// Print a widget
await FlutterPrint.printWidget(
  (ctx) => Theme(data: Theme.of(ctx), child: MyReceiptWidget()),
  context: context,
  options: PrintOptions(pageSize: PaperSizes.a4),
);

// Preview a widget in-app before printing
final png = await FlutterPrint.previewWidget(
  (ctx) => Theme(data: Theme.of(ctx), child: MyReceiptWidget()),
  context: context,
  options: PrintOptions(pageSize: PaperSizes.a4),
);
Image.memory(png);

Feature support by platform

Feature Android iOS macOS Windows Linux Web
Direct print ✔️¹ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
Print preview ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️² ✔️³ ✔️
List printers ✔️ ✔️ ✔️

¹ With a printerAddress from FlutterPrint.ios?.pickPrinter() (e.g. ipp://printer.local./ipp/print). Without it, the system print dialog is shown.
² A Flutter print dialog with a built-in preview.
³ Opens the file in its default viewer with xdg-open.

Option support by platform

Options a platform doesn't support are silently ignored.

Option Android iOS macOS Windows Linux Web
printerAddress ✔️¹ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
pageSize ✔️⁵ ✔️ ✔️² ✔️³
margins ✔️⁵ ✔️
copies ✔️ ✔️² ✔️
landscape ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️² ✔️
color ✔️ ✔️ ✔️⁴ ✔️² ✔️
duplexMode ✔️⁵ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️² ✔️
pageRanges ✔️ ✔️² ✔️

¹ print only, with an address from FlutterPrint.ios?.pickPrinter(). printPreview ignores it.
² For PDF, image, EMF/WMF and text files only.
³ Requires the CUPS development libraries at build time (see Linux).
⁴ The print panel shows the requested color when the printer driver has colour presets (AirPrint and most drivers).
⁵ For PDF files only.

On macOS, the options are applied to the print panel too, so the user starts from the requested settings.

File types

Platform PDF & images Text documents Other files
Android Native Not supported Not supported
iOS Native UNSUPPORTED_FILE UNSUPPORTED_FILE
macOS Native Native¹ print fails with UNSUPPORTED_FILE; printPreview opens the default app
Windows Native² Native³ Printed by the associated application, with its own settings⁴
Linux CUPS CUPS CUPS
Web Browser Browser Browser

¹ Plain text, RTF, HTML, Word and OpenDocument text (macOS 11+).
² Also EMF and WMF, printed as vectors.
³ Any text file, detected by its content (.txt, .csv, .json, .md, .log, source code…), printed as plain text.
⁴ Including HTML, SVG and RTF.

Image support by platform

Format Android iOS macOS Windows Linux
JPEG ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
PNG ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
BMP ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
GIF ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
TIFF ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
WebP ✔️ ✔️¹ ✔️¹ ✔️² ✔️³
HEIC ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️² ✔️³

¹ Requires iOS 14 / macOS 11 or later.
² Requires the WebP or HEIC codec from the Microsoft Store (built into Windows 11 for HEIC).
³ Requires the matching GDK-Pixbuf loader: webp-pixbuf-loader for WebP, libheif + heif-pixbuf-loader for HEIC.

On Windows, any format with an installed WIC codec prints too (AVIF, JPEG XL, camera RAW…). Each page of a TIFF prints as a page, and page ranges apply. Photos print upright from their EXIF orientation.

Setup

macOS

Add the print entitlement to macos/Runner/Release.entitlements and macos/Runner/DebugProfile.entitlements:

<key>com.apple.security.print</key>
<true/>

The plugin works in sandboxed apps and needs no other entitlement.

Windows

  • x64 only for now.
  • The first build downloads PDFium binaries and bundles pdfium.dll with your app.
  • Ship PDFium's licence notices with your app: LICENSE and licenses/ in build/windows/x64/_deps/pdfium-src/.

Linux

Printer enumeration and direct printing require the CUPS development libraries. Install them before building the application:

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install libcups2-dev

# Fedora / RHEL / CentOS
sudo dnf install cups-devel

# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S cups

Without them the plugin still compiles, but listPrinters returns an empty list and print falls back to the lp command-line tool (which requires CUPS to be running), without pageSize support.

Libraries

flutter_print