liquid_glass_bottom_nav_cli

One command to install liquid_glass_bottom_nav into a Flutter project and configure the native iOS side it needs.

Install the command

dart pub global activate liquid_glass_bottom_nav_cli

Works on macOS, Windows and Linux.

If your shell reports liquid_glass: command not found, the pub cache is not on your PATH. Add whichever applies:

Platform Directory
macOS / Linux $HOME/.pub-cache/bin
Windows %LOCALAPPDATA%\Pub\Cache\bin

Get the whole project onto a new machine

liquid_glass bootstrap

Clones the full repository — harness app, plugin and this CLI — and runs pub get in every package it finds, picking flutter pub get or dart pub get per package. Then cd in and flutter run.

Options: --repo <url> to clone from somewhere else, --ref <branch|tag> to check out a specific version, --no-pub-get to clone only. Pass a directory name as an argument to override the default (taken from the repo name).

Requires git on your PATH; the command says so plainly if it is missing.

Start a new app

One command, from nothing to a running glass nav:

liquid_glass create my_app
cd my_app && flutter run

This runs flutter create, adds the plugin, raises the iOS deployment target, and writes a lib/main.dart with a four-tab bar already wired up — including the extendBody: true and full-screen Stack placement the widget needs, and a Material NavigationBar fallback so the app still runs on Android, web and desktop.

Options: --org com.example to set the bundle identifier prefix, --plugin-path <dir> to depend on a local plugin checkout instead of the published one, --no-ios-config to leave Xcode settings alone.

Add it to an existing app

From anywhere inside your Flutter app:

liquid_glass install

This will:

  1. Find the project root by walking up from the current directory.
  2. Run flutter pub add liquid_glass_bottom_nav, then flutter pub get.
  3. Raise IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET to 16.0 in ios/Runner.xcodeproj if it is lower, and the platform :ios line in your Podfile if you have one. The originals are saved alongside as .bak. Pass --no-ios-config to skip this entirely.
  4. Print the widget snippet to paste in.

Re-running is a no-op. On Windows and Linux step 3 is skipped, since iOS builds require macOS — the dependency is still added, so you can develop against the fallback widget.

Check your setup

liquid_glass doctor

The plugin guards every iOS 26 API with #available, so on older systems it builds and runs fine but quietly renders the classic flat tab bar instead of Liquid Glass. doctor tells you which one you are going to get, and why:

Project
  [ok]   Flutter project at /Users/you/my_app
  [ok]   liquid_glass_bottom_nav declared in pubspec.yaml

iOS project
  [ok]   Deployment target 16.0
  [--]   No Podfile (Swift Package Manager project)

Toolchain
  [ok]   Xcode 26.5
  [ok]   Simulator runtime: iOS 26.5

Verdict
  [ok]   Builds against iOS 16.0. Liquid Glass renders on iOS 26.0+ devices;
         older devices get the classic flat tab bar.

Note that the deployment target sets only the build floor. Which bar you get is decided at runtime by the device's OS version, so a project targeting iOS 16.0 still shows full Liquid Glass when run on iOS 26.

doctor exits non-zero when something is actually broken, so it is safe to put in CI.

Libraries