multi_window

A Flutter package for easily creating and destroying new windows on Desktop.

NOTE: This plugin is still under heavy development, as long as v1 hasn't been reach expect breaking changes left and right.

Features

Feature	MacOS	Linux	Windows
Creating new windows	✔️	✔️
Receive window events¹	✔️	✔️
Communicate between windows	✔️	✔️

Notes:

1. For more info about implemented events see the Events table.

Getting Started

Required Flutter Setup

In your lib/main.dart change your main method to the following:

void main(List<String> args) {
  MultiWindow.init(args);

  ... // Rest of your code
}

Linux Setup

No setup is required for Linux.

MacOS Setup

Inside your application folder, go to macos\runner\MainFlutterWindow.swift and add this line after the one saying import FlutterMacOS:

import FlutterMacOS
import multi_window_macos // Add this line.

Then add the following line as the first line inside the awakeFromNib() function:

override func awakeFromNib() {
  MultiWindowMacosPlugin.registerGeneratedPlugins = RegisterGeneratedPlugins // Add this line.

And below that line change the FlutterViewController to MultiWindowViewController:

let flutterViewController = MultiWindowViewController()

Your code should now look something like this:

... // Your other imports

import multi_window_macos

class MainFlutterWindow: NSWindow {
  override func awakeFromNib() {
    MultiWindowMacosPlugin.registerGeneratedPlugins = RegisterGeneratedPlugins
    
    let flutterViewController = MultiWindowViewController.init()

    ... // Rest of your code

Usage

Accessing your current window

You don't want to keep track of your own current window, so we introduced a helper property called current for you:

final window = MultiWindow.current; // Returns the current instance this code is running on.

NOTE: The first window on startup always has the key main.

Creating a new window

To create a new window you can call the MultiWindow.create method:

final window = await MultiWindow.create(
  'your_unique_key',
  size: Size(100, 100), // Optional size.
  title: 'Your Title', // Optional title.
);

If a window with the given key already exists it will return a reference to that window.

Getting lists of total created windows

Retrieving the total amount of windows can be done using the MultiWindow.count method:

final totalWindows = await MultiWindow.count();

Setting and getting a window title

If you want to set or get the title of your window you can use the setTitle and getTitle methods respectively on your instance:

await window.setTitle('My fancy title');
final currentTitle = await window.getTitle(); // Returns 'My fancy title'.

Listening and emitting events

You can also send data to other windows and listen to events on them.

If you want to listen to events on your current window you can do the following:

MultiWindow.current.events.listen((event) {
  print('From: ${event.from}, of type ${event.type} with data ${event.data}');
});

You can also emit events on your own window like so:

await MultiWindow.current.emit('Hello!');

If your current window's key is main, then another window can listen to events on your current window by just getting a reference to that window:

final window = await MultiWindow.create('main');
window.events.listen((event) {
  print('From: ${event.from}, of type ${event.type} with data ${event.data}');
});