flex_color_scheme 5.0.0

A Flutter package to use and make beautiful Material design based themes.

Changelog

All notable changes to the FlexColorScheme package are documented here.

v5.0.0 - April 21, 2022

The full journey from version 4.2.0 to stable 5.0.0 includes the steps in change logs for development versions 5.0.0-dev.3, -dev.2 and -dev.1. Please refer to them for all details. This changelog contains a summary of breaking and other critical changes from version 4.2.0.

Overview

FlexColorScheme version 5 is style wise a big breaking change since all the built-in produced ColorSchemes the themes use have been revised to follow the new Flutter 2.10.0 Material 3 based ColorScheme. The color changes to the built-in schemes have been kept minimal compared to previous styles.

Mostly new color values were added to provide support for all the new colors in the Flutter Material 3 ColorScheme update, that landed in Flutter 2.10.0. The new colors are style aligned with past styles as far possible, while also keeping them inline with the Material 3 ColorScheme design intent.

As ColorScheme.primaryVariant and secondaryVariant have been deprecated in Flutter 2.10 SDK, so have they in FlexColorScheme. All past color constants for all color values and helper classes with the name "variant" in them, have been self deprecated in FlexColorScheme. The variant color values still exists, if you have used any of them directly, they still work. The old built-in variant color values will remain available at least until version 6.0, maybe even 7.0 if so requested by users.

Breaking

• Requires at least Flutter 2.10.0.

  • Version 5.0.0 requires at least Flutter version 2.10.0 to work. This breaking change is required since the new color properties in ColorScheme do not exist in any stable version of Flutter before version 2.10.

• surfaceStyle removed.

  • In version 5.0.0, the in version 4.2.0 deprecated property surfaceStyle, including all its implementing classes, enums, helpers and tests have been removed.
  • Removed property: surfaceStyle in FlexColorScheme.light and FlexSchemeData.light.
  • Removed property: surfaceStyle in FlexColorScheme.dark and FlexSchemeData.dark.
  • Removed: enum FlexSurface, that only surfaceStyle was using.
  • Removed: factory FlexSchemeSurfaceColors.from that was used to create surface using the surfaceStyle. The factory FlexSchemeSurfaceColors.blend replaced it in version 4.0.0 already, when using surfaceMode and blendLevel.
  • Migration: Use surfaceMode and blendLevel instead, it has more blend styles and finer granularity than the removed surfaceStyle.

theme: FlexThemeData.light(
  scheme: FlexScheme.flutterDash,
  surfaceMode: FlexSurfaceMode.highScaffoldLowSurface,
  blendLevel: 20,
),

• FlexSubThemesData.navigationBarIsStyled removed.

  • The property navigationBarIsStyled in FlexSubThemesData has been removed. If you have used it, it has a broader more general replacement called FlexSubThemesData.useFlutterDefaults.
  • Migration: Consider using useFlutterDefaults instead, or set styles manually using individual properties to desired styles matching Flutter defaults un-themed component designs.

• FlexColorScheme.useSubThemes no function

  • Deprecated property useSubThemes. This property has no function after 4.2.0 stable and 5.0.0-dev.1. Previously setting this property to true activated the default set and configuration of the optional opinionated component sub-themes, even if you did not pass any FlexSubThemesData() configuration data to subThemesData. Before when useSubThemes was true and no subThemesData defined, it created one internally using the default constructor FlexSubThemesData() and used it. It also ignored any defined and to subThemesData assigned one, if the flag was set to false.
  • The default component sub-themes are now instead always activated and created by explicitly assigning at least a default constructor FlexSubThemesData() to FlexColorScheme.subThemesData.
  • Removing this property makes the API more consistent. It follows the same design that is used for keyColors with FlexKeyColors and tones with FlexTones.
  • Migration: If you previously had only set FlexColorScheme.useSubThemes to true and not specified any subThemesData properties, you must now add the default constructor. Likewise, if you had set FlexColorScheme.useSubThemes to false, and had a FlexColorScheme.subThemesData defined, you must remove it disable using it. If you need to toggle it ON and OFF, use a bool to enabled/disable it, then pass in the FlexSubThemesData when enabled, and null when not using it.

Breaking and deprecated due to Flutter SDK change in 2.10.0 stable release.

• primaryVariant and secondaryVariant
  • The colors primaryVariant and secondaryVariant in FlexColorScheme are deprecated and can no longer be used to set colors values that result in any color values in Flutter SDK deprecated same named ColorScheme color properties.
  • The ColorScheme deprecated properties primaryVariant and secondaryVariant will always get their Flutter SDK default values, regardless of what input you give to them in FlexColorScheme. Flutter sets its deprecated primaryVariant equal to primary and secondaryVariant equal to secondary.
  • This means that if your application used those color scheme values on any custom widgets, their colors will change if you upgrade from a previous version of FlexColorScheme and don't do any other changes. You need to migrate to use primaryContainer, secondaryContainer, tertiary or tertiaryContainer color, as replacement colors in your custom widgets. The right choice depends on your color design.
  • If you use a FlexColorScheme setup made for a version before version 5.0, with version 5.0, and, if you have used custom color schemes where you defined theFlexColorScheme properties primaryVariant and secondaryVariant or defined and used them via custom FlexSchemeColors, in the colors property in FlexColorScheme. Then, in those cases the variant color properties will function as fallback input for color properties primaryContainer and secondaryContainer respectively, unless own color values for these properties are provided.
  • When you upgrade package version to 5.0.0 and have used custom color schemes, you will find your custom variant colors on the corresponding new container colors. Be aware that past variant color shades are not necessarily a great fit for a Material 3 design intent of container colors, but at least you will get your past custom colors used in the new theme by default.
  • Migration: Define new custom colors values for all container colors and tertiary color. Use them to make your custom FlexColorScheme instead. Then migrate away from using Flutter SDK ColorScheme colors primaryVariant and secondaryVariant anywhere in your application. Instead, use any of its new ColorScheme color properties as fitting with your design. This is something you have to do after Flutter 2.10, even if you are not using FlexColorScheme. Sure, not immediately, but eventually when the Flutter SDK ColorScheme colors primaryVariant and secondaryVariant are removed after a year or so.

Change and breaking past style.

• The custom "internal" and temporary m3TextTheme was changed. It is style breaking with 4.2.0 and 5.0.0-dev.1 & 2. It breaks past used style when opting in on component themes and its optional custom m3TextTheme enabled. The updated custom implementation of it now follows the implementation used in Flutter master channel, apart from this issue, where it for now implements the value used in the M3 Web guide. The changes in styles otherwise concern the addition of the font geometry height, which the previous custom implementation did not have. The usage of the custom m3TextTheme should be considered internal and temporary. It will be changed to use the actual Flutter implementation once PR #97829 lands in Flutter stable channel. The custom m3TextTheme will then be deprecated.

• The computed colors for ThemeData colors primaryColorLight, primaryColorDark and secondaryHeaderColor were changed. It is style breaking with 4.2.0 and 5.0.0-dev.1 & 2. The change breaks past used styles on these rarely used colors. These ThemeData colors are also on a deprecation path and will likely receive some new none MaterialColor dependent color defaults when that change happens. The new ColorScheme.primary computed colors for these rarely used colors are better balanced than before, and work well regardless of used ColorScheme.primary shade and tint.

• The color definition value for FlexColor.espressoLightPrimary color was changed. This is style breaking with 4.2.0 and 5.0.0-dev.1 & 2. The new color for FlexColor.espressoLightPrimary breaks past used color for this color constant. The color was changed from 0xFF220804 to 0xFF452F2B. Past color was too dark brown, almost black to be very usable in a UI. It was very black coffee like, but not very practical in a UI, it was too close to black. Since version 5 is anyway a major style breaking with the introduction of the new Material 3 ColorScheme, the opportunity to improve this color value used in the built-in theme espresso theme was used.

Beware

• SchemeColor values and order, potentially breaking. The enum SchemeColor has new values and past values are in a new order. The order was changed to accommodate all the new color values, and to keep them in the same order as their corresponding color properties in Flutter Material 3 ColorScheme color values. The change of order is potentially breaking, but highly unlikely to break anything in major ways in normal usage.

v5.0.0-dev.3 - April 20, 2022

CHANGE - Breaking past style

• The custom "internal" and temporary m3TextTheme was changed. It is style breaking with 4.2.0 and 5.0.0-dev.1 & 2. It breaks past used style when opting in on component themes and its optional custom m3TextTheme enabled. The updated custom implementation of it now follows the implementation used in Flutter master channel, apart from this issue, where it for now implements the value used in the M3 Web guide. The changes in styles otherwise concern the addition of the font geometry, height, which the previous custom implementation did not have. The usage of the custom m3TextTheme should be considered internal and temporary, it will be changed to use the actual Flutter implementation once PR #97829 lands in Flutter stable channel. The custom m3TextTheme will then be deprecated.

• The computed colors for ThemeData colors primaryColorLight, primaryColorDark and secondaryHeaderColor were changed. It is style breaking with 4.2.0 and 5.0.0-dev.1 & 2. The change breaks past used styles on these rarely used colors. These ThemeData colors are also on a deprecation path and will likely receive some new none MaterialColor dependent color defaults when that change happens. The new ColorScheme.primary computed colors for these rarely used colors are better balanced than before, and work well regardless of used ColorScheme.primary shade and tint.

• The color definition value for FlexColor.espressoLightPrimary color was changed. This is style breaking with 4.2.0 and 5.0.0-dev.1 & 2. The new color for FlexColor.espressoLightPrimary breaks past used color for this color constant. The color was changed from 0xFF220804 to 0xFF452F2B. Past color was too dark brown, almost black to be very usable in a UI. It was very black coffee like, but not very practical in a UI, it was too close to black. Since version 5 is anyway a major style breaking with the introduction of the new Material 3 ColorScheme, the opportunity to improve this color value used in the built-in theme espresso theme was used.

CHANGE

• The package documentation has now moved too its own site at docs.flexcolorscheme.com. It is a major update and rewrite of previous documentation. It also contains general Flutter theming guidance.

FIX

• The examples contain minor improvements and fixes.

v5.0.0-dev.2 - April 4, 2022

BREAKING

• Completed in version 4.0.0 for version 5.0.0 planned removal of deprecated property surfaceStyle, including all its implementing classes, enums and helpers:

  • Removed property: surfaceStyle in FlexColorScheme.light.
  • Removed property: surfaceStyle in FlexColorScheme.dark.
  • Removed: enum FlexSurface, that surfaceStyle where.
  • Removed: factory FlexSchemeSurfaceColors.from that was used to create surface using the FlexSurface. The factory FlexSchemeSurfaceColors.blend replaced in version 4.0.0 already when using surfaceMode and blendLevel.
  • Removed tests and modified tests needing to consider above removals.

• Deprecated property useSubThemes. This property has no function after 4.2.0 stable and 5.0.0-dev.1. FlexColorScheme opinionated component sub-themes are now created by adding a default constructor FlexSubThemesData() or one with some custom property values set, to subThemesData. This creates sub-themes using the FlexColorScheme opinionated sub-themes. Removing this property makes the API more consistent. It now follows the same design that is used for keyColors with FlexKeyColors and tones with FlexTones. Setting the property useSubThemes will not cause an error, it just has no effect. You can safely remove it. The property useSubThemes will be removed in release 6.0.0.

• The property navigationBarIsStyled in FlexSubThemesData was removed in v5.0.0-dev.1 as no longer needed. It is now kind of back with a new broader replacement called FlexSubThemesData.useFlutterDefaults. The in dev.1 version tested API-style to set various SchemeColor properties to null, to get SDK default for them was not nice. The FlexSubThemesData should default to its own preferred and recommended harmonized defaults when not defined. It is better to offer a toggle that can be set, to when possible/offer an opt-out from some bigger style differences from SDK defaults. This can be useful if one wants to create custom component themes and wish to start from less opinionated ones. The new useFlutterDefaults is false by default, and the sub-themes undefined null values result in its own harmonized and recommended settings. By setting it to true a bit messier and un-harmonized Flutter default are back. Currently, this impacts different styles and colors on BottomNavigationBar, NavigationBar, and NavigationRail. See API docs for details regarding defaults with this flag on and off.

• The FlexSubThemesData property popupMenuRadius and the radius in corresponding static sub-theme helper FlexSubThemes.popupMenuTheme, now defaults to 4. In versions before v5.0.0-dev.2 it defaulted to 10. The M3 spec for it was not available when it was chosen originally. It was assumed to have higher border radius like rest of designs. However, the spec has it defined here now, and it is 4. Since border radius default values are stated in FlexColorScheme sub-theme design goals to follow the M3 design specs, it was updated to match the spec. A bit higher rounding, may actually fit better with the very round M3 design, try 8 or 10. It is very simple to change bach with the API.

FIX

• Pub.dev analysis does not like document references to deprecated Flutter properties. Changed the primaryVariant and secondaryVariant references in document comments to primaryVariant and secondaryVariant. Nor does it like when you use tests to deprecated Flutter SDK members, removed them too, they were not needed either after some redesign of a few tests.

• Fixed. When using sub-themes and selecting a ColorScheme based color, as color for the AppBar, instead of using abbBarStyle in light and dark factories, the appBarOpacity was not applied to the selected color. The priority of effective AppBar color was also revised to follow the norm, which from lowest to highest is:

  • appBarStyle in light/dark factories and ThemeData extensions, which selects the used color from active scheme or colors, in the same factories or extensions.
  • appBarBackgroundSchemeColor in FlexSubThemesData when used.
  • appBarBackground in FlexColorScheme.

CHANGE

• Changed the priority in FlexColorScheme when using direct input color properties, colorScheme input and using key color seeded ColorScheme generation. The new order is that input colorScheme is in this rare use case always overridden by the seed generate ColorScheme. This allows us to use a colorScheme as input to seed generation, where this color scheme could already have been externally seeded generated, but that we want to modify by using custom FlexTones or surface blends in FlexColorScheme. The direct properties overrides the seeded color scheme as before, unless it is primary, secondary, tertiary or their container colors. In that case the keyColors, "keep" property determines if those colors are kept or not.

• The FlexSubThemesData property inputDecorationRadius was deprecated and renamed to inputDecoratorRadius, to harmonize the other InputDecoration property names in FlexSubThemesData. The old name will be removed in release 6.0.0.

• Deprecated and renamed navigationBarHighlightSchemeColor to navigationBarIndicatorSchemeColor in FlexSubThemesData, to harmonize the naming standard. Likewise, the parameter highlightSchemeColor ìn FlexSubThemes.navigationBarTheme was deprecated and replaced by indicatorSchemeColor. The old names will be removed in release 6.0.0.

• In 5.0.0-dev.1, the renamed properties were deprecated and broken with 4.2.0. They are still deprecated, but now fallback via the old properties. They are no longer breaking. This concerns FlexSubThemesData properties:

  • bottomNavigationBarSchemeColor -> bottomNavigationBarSelectedLabelSchemeColor
  • navigationBarTextSchemeColor -> navigationBarSelectedLabelSchemeColor
  • navigationBarMutedUnselectedText -> navigationBarMutedUnselectedLabel
  • navigationBarIconSchemeColor -> navigationBarSelectedIconSchemeColor

  And FlexSubThemes.navigationBarTheme properties:

  • textSchemeColor -> selectedLabelSchemeColor
  • unselectedTextSchemeColor -> unselectedLabelSchemeColor
  • iconSchemeColor -> selectedIconSchemeColor
  • mutedUnselectedText -> mutedUnselectedLabel

  And FlexSubThemes.bottomNavigationBarTheme properties:

  • baseSchemeColor -> selectedLabelSchemeColor

  The old property names will be removed in release 6.0.0.

NEW

• Added SchemeColor based theming of SnackBar background color via snackBarBackgroundSchemeColor in FlexSubThemesData and support for it in FlexSubThemes.

• Changed the color values for FlexColor.materialLightSecondaryContainer and FlexColor.materialLightSecondaryContainerHc. These color properties do not have any specification in Material 2 spec. Updated the colors values that had been made up for dev.1 release to better match the design intent of those colors for the new Material 3 ColorScheme.

• Added inputDecoratorUnfocusedBorderIsColored to FlexSubThemesData and support for it in FlexSubThemes via unfocusedBorderIsColored. Previously an unfocused or hovered border/underline always had a hint of selected base color. Setting this to false, leaves it at the grey defaults used by Flutter defaults.

• Added navigationBarIndicatorOpacity and navigationRailIndicatorOpacity to FlexSubThemesData, to expose their already existing properties in corresponding sub-themes used by FlexColorScheme.

DEMO APPS

• Themes Playground improvements:
  • Added a new single panel "Page" view. The previous large masonry grid view is still available. Both views can be used and switch to based on what is appropriate when using different media sizes.
  • The switches to keep main input colors for primary, secondary, tertiary and their containers, where separated so that their state and code generation for light and dark theme mode are separate. This makes them more useful for actual theme setup. Earlier you had to separate them by editing the generated code.
  • Added display of SnackBar style to the Themed Material panel.
  • Added display of more ListTile types.
  • Added ColorScheme based color selection theming of SnackBar background color.
  • Added CodeView as a panel of its own. It is now possible to view the changes to generated code as settings are changed. In the advanced view where one can keep it open and close other panels, except one being operated in. In page view it is shown as last page, however if the media is large enough, it is shown side-by-side with controls on current page. This is a really handy view for studying what each control does in the generated code.
  • Added missing code gen for button border radius.
  • Fixed broken code gen for dark mode blend level.
  • Decoupled all bundled theming controls in the app.
  • Added individual override controls for border radius to all components.
  • Added option to swap or not swap computed dark mode main and container color.
  • Added indicator opacity controls to NavigationBar and NavigationRail.
  • Reduced amount of pre-set defaults in the app, so it starts with simpler setup code.
  • Changed the code gen style for dark mode when using from light mode computed dark theme.
  • Changed the code gen, so it does not add any code when using API default values.
  • Changed the ThemeService to use generic types.

TESTS

• Finalized test updates. Now 1684 tests, coverage about 99.8%.

v5.0.0-dev.1 - March 14, 2022

Version 5 is a big refactor with deprecation of previous variant based color names in favor of container ones that were added to updated M3 based ColorScheme in Flutter 2.10.0. The same additions and changes are now also introduced in FlexColorScheme. Despite being a very big release, with many new features, actual breaking changes are very few and mostly concerns in version 4 deprecated members and of course requiring minimum Flutter 2.10.0 to work.

The WIP updates now includes the version of the key color seeded M3 ColorScheme usage intended for the final design. The feature supports seeding by not only using a single primary key color, but also using separate key colors for secondary and tertiary colors. The Flutter SDK ColorScheme.fromSeed only support using a single color as seed. The primary, secondary and tertiary color are used as key color seeds, when seeding is used, and by default all three color are used as key for their respective tonal palette used by the generated ColorScheme. Using secondary and tertiary colors can each optionally be turned OFF. If both are, the result is same as when using ColorScheme.fromSeed, with the primary color as seed key color.

When using a key seed color generated ColorScheme, it may sometimes, e.g., for branding purposes, be useful to lock a certain color in the resulting ColorScheme to the actual key color value used for primary, secondary and tertiary. FlexColorScheme includes scheme appropriate colors for each of these color properties, as well their containers. You can for each property define which ones you want to keep as defined by these input colors, in the seed generated ColorScheme. You can of course use this feature with custom input colors as well.

The bundled example 5, the Themes Playground is now fully up to date with all the new features. Its updated code generation still needs results verification.

There are also now in Flutter master channel more actual M3 impacts and ThemeData color property deprecations commits landed in Flutter master channel that I reviewed and prepared for in advance when possible.

Much work on tests, and readme documentation updates remain, but API docs are up-to-date. This book long change log may also help. There are only a few breaking changes, and most of them are rarely used properties, so migration should be relatively easy, despite the long list of changes and new features.

BREAKING

• Requires at least Flutter stable 2.10.0.This release uses new M3 ColorScheme properties that are not included before Flutter version 2.10.0, as well as the ThemeData flag useMaterial3.

• Removed parameter surfaceStyle from FlexThemeData extensions FlexThemeData.light and FlexThemeData.dark that uses in version 4.2.0 already deprecated property surfaceStyle in FlexColorScheme class. The same deprecated property surfaceStyle in FlexColorScheme class is still available in 5.0.0-dev.1. In the stable release 5.0.0 it might be removed as well. They were all scheduled for deprecation in version 5.0.0, but keeping it around a bit longer in the main class in 5.0.0-dev releases to prolong backwards API compatibility during development. Maybe I will keep it in the release too, many tests need to be rewritten when they are removed.

• The enum SchemeColor has new values and past values are in a new order. The order was changed to accommodate new color values and to keep them in the same order as their corresponding color properties in M3 ColorScheme. The change of order is potentially breaking, but unlikely to break anything in major ways, other than possibly local storage of selected enum values. In the bundled samples you might for example see wrong color selections loaded from local storage, just reset or select correct value to fix it.

• To get more harmonized setup on opt-in sub themes for NavigationBar, BottomNavigationBar and NavigationRail a few properties in FlexSubThemesData and FlexSubThemes had to be modified and broken. Impact is estimated to be low for most users.

  The following properties were renamed in FlexSubThemesData:

  • navigationBarTextSchemeColor -> navigationBarSelectedLabelSchemeColor
  • navigationBarMutedUnselectedText -> navigationBarMutedUnselectedLabel
  • navigationBarIconSchemeColor -> navigationBarSelectedIconSchemeColor
  • bottomNavigationBarSchemeColor -> bottomNavigationBarSelectedLabelSchemeColor

  In FlexSubThemesData the property navigationBarIsStyled was removed. It is no longer needed. The same end result it enabled can be achieved by setting all NavigationBar related properties in FlexSubThemesData that have a none null default value to null.

  The following parameters were renamed in FlexSubThemes.navigationBarTheme:

  • textSchemeColor -> selectedLabelSchemeColor
  • unselectedTextSchemeColor -> unselectedLabelSchemeColor
  • iconSchemeColor -> selectedIconSchemeColor
  • mutedUnselectedText -> mutedUnselectedLabel

  The following parameter was renamed in FlexSubThemes.bottomNavigationBarTheme:

  • baseSchemeColor -> selectedLabelSchemeColor

NEW

• Added useMaterial3 to all theme constructors and factories. This is the same flag as in ThemeData, it does not have any major impact on default themed widgets in Flutter 2.10.x. Opting in on opinionated sub-themes, will however as before give opinionated component sub-themes that result in Material 3 like styles. Similar look will become default widget design in later Flutter SDK versions when using the flag useMaterial3 is set to true.

• Added new properties onPrimaryContainer, onSecondaryContainer, tertiary, tertiaryContainer, onTertiary and onTertiaryContainer to the un-namedFlexColorScheme constructor and factories FlexColorScheme.light and FlexColorScheme.dark, as well as to extension FlexThemeData to extensions FlexThemeData.light and FlexThemeData.dark on ThemeData.

• In FlexColor added new color properties for all color values to cover the new "Container" color properties in Flutter 2.10 new M3 ColorScheme. For every built-in FlexColor, there are now also these new color properties:

  • primaryContainer
  • secondaryContainer
  • tertiary
  • tertiaryContainer

  The previous color values maps as follows:

  • tertiary = old secondaryVariant color value, that is deprecated for each color value.
  • Old primaryVariant, is just deprecated for each color value.

  The "variant" colors are still available as deprecated properties, and will remain available until version 6.0.0. The old color properties and their values still work as inputs, and they produce same equivalent ColorScheme results as before. This is done by the values still being assigned as fallback value in custom schemes so that new:

  • primaryContainer if not assigned, falls back via old primaryVariant.
  • secondaryContainer if not assigned, falls back via old secondaryVariant.

  When it comes to the new built-in scheme designs, the color used on past:

  • secondaryVariant was a reasonable fit for new M3 tertiary color property and was used as its value.
  • The new properties secondaryContainer and tertiaryContainer, had to get new built-in color values that fit with the M3 design intent for those color properties. This while considering the value secondary already had, and the value tertiary got by being assigned the color value of past secondaryVariant.
  • The new color property primaryContainer also needed a new color value. The past primaryVariant is not the correct design fit for how the color value is intended to be used in M3 Color design.
  • In many cases it was possible to make nice color schemes, by reshuffling some existing color values and using colors from light scheme, in container properties in dark scheme and vice versa. Sometimes new better tuned color values were used. In all events all Container color properties are new features in this release, so they are considered "new" even if their color value might have been recycled from previous properties in some cases. Some Container color values may still be fine-tuned before final 5.0.0 release, but it is unlikely.

• In class FlexSchemeColor added new color properties primaryContainer and secondaryContainer they replace deprecated properties primaryVariantand secondaryVariant. The old properties still work and are used as fallback to the new ones when the new ones are not provided. The previous properties are still available as deprecated, and will remain available until version 6.0.0, or until they are removed from the Flutter stable channel, whichever comes first. The properties for built-in schemes were assigned to their new corresponding FlexColorvalues.

• In class FlexSchemeColor added new color definitions from FlexColor for FlexSchemeColor.tertiary and FlexSchemeColor.tertiaryContainer.

• In class FlexSchemeColor the FlexSchemeColor.secondaryContainer and FlexSchemeColor.tertiaryContainer should be brighter versions of their none container parent light mode and darker in dark mode. They receive such color values via new corresponding FlexColorvalues.

• In factory FlexSchemeColor.from added optional and nullable parameter brightness. If not assigned, the factory works as before, producing a complete FlexSchemeColor from just one or more color property inputs, by producing a toned complete FlexSchemeColor suitable for a light or dark M2 design based theme. If brightness is given value Brightness.light it produces a FlexSchemeColor from just one or more color property inputs suitable for a M3 light theme mode theme. If brightness is dark, for a dark mode intended M3 scheme. When brightness is defined the factory also sets defaults for error and errorContainer colors, if they were not passed in. The error color is based on the Material 2 guide color and errorContainer is a FlexColorScheme definition as it has no M2 value. Seed based new M3 error colors are used when using key based seeded M3 ColorScheme. An option to also use M3 based error colors when not using seeded ColorScheme, may be added in a future version.

• Factory FlexSchemeColor.effective got the same nullable and optional brightness property as FlexSchemeColor.from, with same functionality, producing the same kind of M3 tone mapped colors when reducing amount of used colors, and also providing error color defaults. The FlexSchemeColor.effective factory otherwise works as before considering color swapping and effective input colors reduction. Producing same results via usedColors input limiter as if provided FlexSchemeColor would have been created with FlexSchemeColor.from limited to same colors as implied by usedColors parameter in the FlexSchemeColor.effective factory.

• To the method FlexSchemeColor.toDark(), that computes a dark theme mode appropriate FlexSchemeColor set from colors designed for light theme mode, added the optional positional bool parameter swapColors. It is false by default to not break past behavior. It is used to swap the "main" and its Container color properties. So that primary <> primaryContainer, secondary<> secondaryContainer and tertiary<> tertiaryContainer in the input light theme mode designed FlexSchemeColor are swapped before producing the output FlexSchemeColor suitable for a dark theme mode. This is useful if the input FlexSchemeColor is designed for a light M3 based ColorScheme. If it is then, to get a correct M3 designed output and via whiteBlend value desaturated colors, the main and container values of the light mode colors should be swapped in the result. In light mode, M3 main is darker than container, but in M3 dark mode it should be the other way around so that main is lighter and container is darker. By swapping the colors and then de-saturate them with an adjustable white alpha blend, we can achieve this design goal as well, when computed dark theme mode colors from a set of provided light theme mode input colors.

• Added additional opinionated component sub-themes for:

  • SwitchThemeData via FlexSubThemes.switchTheme.
  • CheckboxTHemeData via FlexSubThemes.checkboxTheme.
  • Radio via FlexSubThemes.radioTheme.
  • NavigationRailThemeData via FlexSubThemes.navigationRailTheme.

  There are many quick and easy configuration parameters added to FlexSubThemesData. The following built-in widgets now have quick and easy custom theming option via sub-themes opt-in.

  • TextButton
  • ElevatedButton
  • OutlinedButton
  • Older buttons using ButtonThemeData
  • ToggleButtons
  • Switch
  • Checkbox
  • Radio
  • InputDecoration
  • FloatingActionButton
  • Chip
  • Card
  • PopupMenuButton
  • Dialog
  • TimePickerDialog
  • SnackBar
  • Tooltip
  • BottomSheet
  • BottomNavigationBar
  • NavigationBar
  • NavigationRail

• Added additional ColorScheme color selection options to component sub-themes configuration class FlexSubThemesData. The feature introduced in version 4.2.0 is now also supported by sub-themes for:

  • FloatingActionButton, via FlexSubThemesData.fabSchemeColor.
  • TextButton, via FlexSubThemesData.textButtonColor.
  • ElevatedButton, via FlexSubThemesData.elevatedButtonColor.
  • OutlinedButton, via FlexSubThemesData.outlinedButtonColor.
  • MaterialButton, via FlexSubThemesData.materialButtonColor.
  • ToggleButtons, via FlexSubThemesData.toggleButtonsColor.
  • Switch via FlexSubThemes.switchTheme.
  • Checkbox via FlexSubThemes.checkboxTheme.
  • Radio via FlexSubThemes.radioTheme.
  • NavigationRail via FlexSubThemes.navigationRailTheme.
  • Dialog backgrounds, affects DialogTheme and TimePickerThemeData via FlexSubThemesData.dialogBackgroundColor. If used this property overrides color property dialogBackground in all FlexColorScheme constructors, factories and theme data extensions.
  • AppBar background color, via the AppBar sub-theme definition is built into the FlexColorScheme.toTheme method (legacy). May migrate its implementation to own FlexSubThemes sub-theme later.
  • TabBar for indicator and item color. The TabBar sub-theme definition is currently built into the FlexColorScheme.toTheme method (legacy). May migrate its implementation to own FlexSubThemes sub-theme later.

• Added a FlexKeyColors configuration class that can be used with the FlexColorScheme.keyColors to enable and configure Material 3 based key color based tonal palettes' generation that are then used to define the ColorScheme. The tonal palettes are generated using existing built-in or custom colors, as key colors for generating palettes. The method matches the ColorScheme.fromSeed Flutter SDK feature if you only use primary color as input. However, it also offers more configuration and flexibility on how to use key colors as seed colors. It does so without the need to go to lower API levels to produce custom tonal palettes and use them manually in the ColorScheme definition. The implementation makes it easy to use a combination of key seeded colors and fixed colors, in any combination, to produce the color scheme. This makes using seeded colors an option for supplementary colors while e.g., primary color is locked to a given brand or design color value, but other colors in the ColorScheme are less critical, and it is more important that they match the tone of the over all theme.

• Added bool property useMaterial3ErrorColors to FlexColorScheme.light and FlexColorScheme.dark. Set to true, to use the new Material 3 error colors, instead of past Material2 based ones, which are still default. When using key color seed generated [ColorScheme]s always use the Material 3 based error colors.

• Added custom tone configuration for seeded ColorScheme. M3 color design has it own fixed defaults for which tone from the relevant TonalPalette is used as input on each color property in the light and corresponding dark ColorScheme. By configuring and passing in a FlexTones to tones in FlexColorScheme.light and FlexColorScheme.dark it is possible to control which color tone from the relevant TonalPalette is used for each color property in generated ColorScheme. Obviously making poor selections produces bad results, but there are some tuning that works very well for different needs, e.g., primary could be assigned a one step lower value in light mode, to produce seeded color schemes that are more vivid or saturated.

• The Material 3 based seeded ColorScheme also locks down the chroma level of seed color for secondary colors to 16 and to 24 for tertiary colors, and keeps it at min 48 for primary color. The FlexTones configuration makes it possible to change these restrictions. You can then get more vivid tonal palettes also for secondary and tertiary TonalPalettes. FlexTones has a FlexTones.light and FlexTones.dark constructor that have default values that gives the same result as using the hard coded ColorScheme.fromSeed tone mapping and chroma limit behavior on TonalPalette. These constructors are also convenient to use when making custom FlexTones setups. To show how, it comes with four built in examples. They take a Brightness value as input, and return FlexTones configs with different design goals suitable for dark or light mode brightness themes. There is FlexTones.material, it is an alternative Brightness input based API for FlexTones.light and FlexTones.dark to get the default Material 3 design guide config. Similarly, there are 3 alternative configurations.

  • FlexTones.soft for even softer and more earthy tones than M3 defaults, that are pretty soft and pastel like to begin with.
  • If you prefer more vivid tones to be generated, try FlexTones.vivid.
  • If you like or need more contrast differences between your colors, you can try FlexTones.highContrast.

  It is easy to make your own configs with the API. The setup of the these built-in examples shows how.

• Added new alpha blend control blendOnLevel value for onColors to class FlexSubThemesData. It is used to produce onColors for main colors that can be adjusted and be more in-line with M3 seed color usage design by tuning their blend level. Before, this was turned on via blendOnColors toggle that will remain, but has a slightly modified new function. The blendOnLevel introduces a new blend level value for onColor that is not tied to used blend level on surfaces.

• Defined matching color values for new FlexSchemeColor.secondaryContainer and FlexSchemeColor.tertiaryContainer for all existing built-in color schemes. This was surprisingly tedious task.

• New color schemes: Added four new built-in color schemes. Total number of color schemes is now 40 matched light and dark pairs.

  • Flutter Dash - A Flutter Dash 4k desktop wallpaper colors based theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.flutterDash for easy access to it.
  • M3 baseline - Material guide 3 baseline based theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.materialBaseline for easy access to it.
  • Verdun green - Material guide 3 verdun and mineral green with hemlock. Use enum value FlexScheme.verdunHemlock for easy access to it.
  • Dell genoa green - Material guide 3 theme with dell, axolotl and genoa greens. Use enum value FlexScheme.dellGenoa for easy access to it.

CHANGE

• Added all the new ColorScheme M3 color properties to SchemeColor enum and its static functions schemeColor and schemeColorPair. Deprecated the enum values primaryVariant and secondaryVariant. These deprecated enum values are still available, but return correct replacement M3 color values from the in Flutter 2.10.0 updated ColorScheme when using functions schemeColor and schemeColorPair.

• To class FlexColorScheme default constructor, light and dark factories, added properties primaryContainer and secondaryContainer. They replace deprecated properties primaryVariant secondaryVariant. The old properties still work and are used as fallback to the new ones, if the new ones are not provided. The previous properties are still available as deprecated, and will remain available until version 6.0.0.

• In extension FlexThemeData to extensions FlexThemeData.light and FlexThemeData.dark added properties primaryContainer and secondaryContainer. They replace deprecated properties primaryVariant secondaryVariant. The old properties still work and are used as fallback to the new ones, if the new ones are not provided. The previous properties are still available as deprecated, and will remain available until version 6.0.0.

• The opt-in, custom M3 TextTheme is now defined using the new actual M3 TextStyle names available in Flutter 2.10.0. The change is none breaking thanks to underlying implementation in Flutter SDK 2.10.0. It now also includes the new styles headlineMedium and labelMedium that do not directly map to any previous M2 text styles. Flutter SDK automatically maps the new TextTheme and its TextStyles to corresponding M2 text style names, so they work and can be used as before. This opt-in TextTheme includes the new M3 typography (text size and letter spacing), for what presumably will become EnglishLike2021 as Typography when it is included in Flutter. This typography (font geometry) is not yet available in Flutter 2.10.0 and was not even in master at the time when Flutter 2.10.0 was released. FlexColorScheme has included a EnglishLike2021 geometry since version 4.0.0, now it also uses the correct TextStyle names since they became available in Flutter 2.10.0. The actual EnglishLike2021 will arrive in the Flutter stable release after 2.10.x. The current custom version of it will be removed then.

• The feature of blendOnColors has changed design wise slightly, it is now used as a toggle to indicate that on colors for the main colors, that is onPrimary, onSecondary, onTertiary and onError should also receive an alpha bland of its color pair, of strength blendOnLevel/2 when blendOnColors is true. If blendOnColors is false, they use white or black contrast color as appropriate for their main color pair. The blending of onColor only occurs when their main color is not using seed based ColorScheme based color value.

• The darkIsTrueBlack option in FlexColorScheme.dark that makes and keeps scaffold background fully black, now makes other blended surfaces 5% darker instead of 8%, scaffold remains black.

• The lightIsWhite option in FlexColorScheme.light that makes and keeps scaffold background fully white, now makes other blended surfaces 5% lighter instead of 8%, scaffold remains white.

• The built-in description for FlexScheme.material was changed to "Default Material 2 color theme, used in the design guide" from "Default Material color theme, used in the design guide", to make it clear it came from the M2 guide.

• The built-in description for FlexScheme.materialHc was changed to "High contrast Material 2 design guide theme" from "High contrast Material design guide theme", to make it clear it came from the M2 guide.

• The order of the colors, in the rarely outside FlexColorScheme used demo apps, theme presentation/switch button FlexThemeModeSwitch was changed for better placement of new color primaryContainer and tertiary. The Colors primaryVariant and secondaryVariant were removed from it since the colors are deprecated in Flutter SDK. The change was from:

  Before	Before
  Primary	Primary variant
  Secondary	Secondary variant

  to:

  After	After
  Primary	Secondary
  Primary container	Tertiary

FIXED

• When using FlexSubThemesData.inputDecoratorSchemeColor the floating label did not change to the selected ColorScheme based SchemeColor. Now it does, it also keeps the correct error color behavior. Tricky bugger to define this one by the way.

• FIX TO MATCH M2 SPEC and STYLE BREAKING: In all previous versions of FlexColorScheme, the Flutter ThemeData.estimateBrightnessForColor was used to calculate if black or white on color should be used on the error colors. In dark mode for the default error FlexColor.materialDarkError and the high contrast dark mode error color FlexColor.materialDarkErrorHc, this resulted in correctly computed contrast color value white being used on them. Regardless of this, the Material 2 guide specifies and Flutter SDK uses, black as the on color for these colors. These two cases were added as special considerations to return black color for these two particular color cases, even if the Flutter contrast color computation says it should be white, but since M2 spec is black, we decided to go with that despite this. It is a borderline case, both work but results in different style.

KNOWN ISSUES

• Due to Flutter SDK issue #100027 "Using systemNavigationBarDividerColor changes statusBarIconBrightness and systemNavigationBarIconBrightness on Android 11" a number of temporary changes were made to FlexColorScheme.themedSystemNavigationBar. The divider feature is disabled until the issue has been resolved. There is also a temporary workaround implemented, it attempts to keep system icons from getting the wrong brightness on Android 11. It may not always work.

EXAMPLES and Themes Playground

• Update examples 1...4

  • Add a few of the new features to examples 3 and 4.
  • Removed showing the old, already in Flutter v1.26 deprecated buttons RaisedButton, OutlineButton and FlatButton in ALL the examples. They are going away in next stable release of Flutter after 2.10.x, as per this notice #98537.

• Update default example app, the Hot Reload Playground.

• Major update for "example 5" the Themes Playground to include support for all the new features. Updates listed below:

  • Added config for unselected toggleable style.
  • Added feature to export the code for the active ColorScheme.
  • Added color scheme color configuration to all opinionated component sub-themes that have it.
  • Added color limit input usedColors, it is an old API in FlexColorScheme, it has just never been featured much.
  • Added useMaterial3 toggle.
  • Added controls for using key color dynamic seeded ColorScheme, using the predefined colors primary, secondary and tertiary as seed colors.
  • Added a setup that demonstrates the usage of FlexTones. Made some useful setups as pre-configured FlexTones, and the playground uses demo. Now comes with FlexTones.material for the default Material 3 design guide config, and FlexTones.soft, FlexTones.vivid, FlexTones.vividSurfaces and FlexTones.highContrast as built-in pre-configured options. It is easy to make own configs with the API.
  • The ThemesPlayground paints active TonalPalettes and highlights selected tones in the palettes when you have on a ColorScheme color. May extend this to make an interactively configurable tonal setup by pickling tones from the TonalPalette and sliders to adjust chroma. this could later be used to create a custom FlexTones config and get it as part of setup code too.
  • Playground Cupertino adaptive switches now also follow theme via a custom SwitchListTileAdaptive wrapper. The iOS green switches are an eyesore imo, but the SDK adaptive switch cannot be changed via a theme alone. Needed to make a custom widget where active thumb, explicitly uses switch theme color as thumb color, sigh.
  • Added border radius individual override adjustments on buttons, to demo that the API can do it too.
  • NavigationBar, BottomNavigationBar and Android system navigation bar were given separate panels, and many new configuration options. They still share some controller values, might separate them in some future version of the app.
  • Added NavigationRail Settings panel, with similar settings and NavigationBar.

TESTS TODO

• Tests are still incomplete and currently down to about 86% coverage, but at least all existing (1275) ones are passing and behave as expected.
• Add tests for new SchemeColor properties.
• Add tests for FlexTones.
• Add tests for FlexKeyColors.
• Add tests for FlexCorePalette.
• Add test for all new sub-themes in FlexSubThemes.
• Add tests for new useMaterial3 property.
• Add tests for all new sub themes FlexSubThemes and its config data in FlexSubThemesData.
• Add more tests for legacy fallbacks when using old deprecated primaryVariant and secondaryVariant properties.
• Add tests and verification of old colors definition backwards behavior.

What is Next?

Curious about what is planned next for FlexColorScheme? Head over to the TODO section at the end of this page and read more here.

v4.2.0 - January 24, 2022

• New: Updated required Dart SDK to minimum 2.15 that Flutter 2.8.0 uses. To use this release at least Flutter 2.8.0 is required.

• New: Added support for opinionated sub-theme for the new Material 3 based NavigationBar. Flutter version 2.8.0 is the first stable version that includes the new Material 3 design based NavigationBar.

• Deprecated: The property surfaceStyle has been deprecated. In version 4.0.0 it was already recommended to use, the then introduced more powerful surface branding properties surfaceMode and blendLevel instead. The surfaceStyle property is still available and works as before, but you now get a deprecation warning if it is used. The property and all its related features will be completely removed in version 5.0.

• New: Custom FlexColorScheme based themes can now also be defined by alternatively passing in a ColorScheme object to the colorScheme property in the constructor, as well as in FlexColorScheme.light and FlexColorScheme.dark factories. When used it overrides the scheme and colors properties in the factories. Same color property in any constructor that exist as direct property in the constructors, still have the highest priority and will also override corresponding color properties in passed in colorScheme. The capability to make custom FlexColorScheme based themes from standard Flutter color schemes is useful if you already have a predefined elaborate ColorScheme definition. You can now use it directly and still use FlexColorScheme for its surface color branding and easy sub-theming. This capability will also be very useful when Material 3 based ColorScheme in Flutter SDK arrives in the stable channel. With Material 3, color schemes may be created using new Material 3 design based color tools, e.g., from seed color(s) or using dynamic colors extracted from system wallpaper colors. With this feature it will then be able to feed those colors directly into FlexColorScheme, and use them as colors to create your ThemeData.

• Changed: All properties in all FlexColorScheme constructors are now optional. The change is none breaking, and uses Material 2 based design guide example theme light and dark as defaults for undefined values.

• New: Added a ColorScheme color selection option to selected opinionated sub-themes configuration class FlexSubThemesData. The sub-themes that support changing their ColorScheme based used theme color selection, have one or more properties called nnnSchemeColor where nnn describes the color feature that can be set to an alternative ColorScheme based color and not just its pre-defined ColorScheme based color property. The color selector is a SchemeColor enum property value that is used to select the enum value that corresponds to same named color property value in theme.colorScheme. This SchemeColor color quick selection option has been added to:

  • Theming TextField via FlexSubThemes.inputDecorationTheme to select a base color for the border and fill color.
  • TabBar sub-theming to select its indicator color, when you want it to be a different color than the color of the TabBar icon and text, which are controlled via FlexTabBarStyle in the FlexColorScheme.tabBarStyle property as before. It gives you an easy option to override the indicator color with any of the theme's colorScheme colors.
  • To BottomNavigationBar via FlexSubThemes.bottomNavigationBar to set the preferred color of the icon and label text in the Material 2 based BottomNavigationBar, as well as used container background color.
  • NavigationBar in FlexSubThemes.navigationBarTheme to set the preferred ColorScheme color of the text, icon in the Material 3 based NavigationBar, as well as the pill shaped highlight color separately that surrounds the selected icon and its container background color.
  • ChipThemeData from FlexSubThemes.chipTheme to change the used ColorScheme based base color of Chips.

• The SchemeColor properties for the above sub-themes have a default selection that results in same ColorScheme color values being used as they had before. The additional configuration options are none breaking. The enum properties to modify the used ColorScheme color can be defined in the configuration class FlexSubThemesData using its new properties:

  • inputDecoratorSchemeColor
  • chipSchemeColor
  • tabBarIndicatorSchemeColor
  • bottomNavigationBarUsedColor
  • bottomNavigationBarSchemeColor
  • bottomNavigationBarBackgroundSchemeColor
  • navigationBarIconSchemeColor
  • navigationBarTextSchemeColor
  • navigationBarHighlightSchemeColor
  • navigationBarBackgroundSchemeColor

• Usage examples of the above new configuration possibilities have been added to the default example, the so-called developers hot reload playground.

• The ColorScheme color selection in SchemeColor includes all colors in ColorScheme supported by Flutter 2.8. You may want to avoid using the primaryVariant and secondaryVariant colors if you want to avoid later migrations. These variant colors are being deprecated in Flutter SDK, see #93427.

• A later FlexColorScheme version will add support for the new Material 3 colors in ColorScheme when they land in the stable channel.

• This quick selection of ColorScheme based colors as none standard themed colors of widget sub-themes, may be extended to a few more sub-themes in future versions. At least if it is seen as a practical and quick way to customize widget sub-theme colors within the constraints of colors in the theme.colorScheme.

• As before you can still apply your own total custom sub-themes to the ThemeData created with FlexColorScheme by using copyWith. FlexColorScheme is a way to easily make fancy and color wise consistent and balanced ThemeData objects using convenience shortcut properties and methods. It does not prevent you from further modifying and tuning the produced ThemeData with standard Flutter SDK features.

• Removed: The uses-material-design: true line from library pubspec.yaml file was removed. It is not needed since Material icon features are not used by this package.

• Example 5 - Themes Playground

  • Fixed onColor for a few colors in the ThemeData color presentation boxes for cases where it might differ from colorScheme onColors. This could happen when disabling FlexColorScheme.
  • Fixed index on _AppBarSettings card.
  • Changed the feature that animate hides not available options based on selections to a version that disables them and resets their state while disabled. Plus a few controls are hidden but take up same space. Hiding the controls caused the panels to change size, often causing relayout of the masonry-grid layout. This was confusing UX, as entire panels might move into new places. While the UI hide animations were cool, this keeps the panels in same place in the grid, which is less confusing to use. Panels can still be closed, and it of course causes relayout of the grid too, but in that use case it is expected.
  • Changed ColorScheme indicator boxes to use the themed border radius.
  • Added a button to copy theme, and improved the explanations to make the functionality more obvious and accessible. Previously only the entire ListTile was the button, this UI with no button was not so clear. Now there is also a button that says COPY. Clicking on the ListTile still works as well.
  • Add and updated app icon resources used by all the example apps.
  • Update to new breaking version of StaggeredGridView 0.6.0. It no longer requires previously used bug work around(s) for a window resize issue that had existed since 2019. For more info on this solved issue, see this article.
  • Added most new features in version 4.2.0 to the Themes Playground app and its theme code generation.

• Example theme - Copy Playground Theme

  • Added a new simple template example, that is handy for trying copy-pasted theme setup code, generated by the Themes Playground example 5.

• Documentation: Reviewed and corrected many API docs. The API docs are very thorough and complete. They usually cover any question you might have and more. Added a brief "API Intro and Guide" chapter to the readme.

• Tests: Added tests to cover the new features, now total 1123 tests.

v4.1.1 - November 20, 2021

• Documentation: Fixed a broken link in the readme that pub.dev analyzer found.

v4.1.0 - November 20, 2021

• Fix: The defaultRadius in FlexSubThemesData now defaults to null so all sub-themes border radius will default to M3 default border radius per widget. The const default value it had, was a remnant from early dev phase when widgets all defaulted to single shared radius and not M3 defaults per widget type. If you explicitly passed in null, you did also in previous version get the M3 defaults. Older tests did that, now they expect same result when no value is assigned, as it should have been.

• Examples: Updated and tuned the examples. Example 5 "Themes Playground" now includes capability to define custom color schemes starting from built-in ones. It can also generate the FlexColorScheme setup code needed for any defined viewed theme setup. You can copy/paste a theme's Flutter Dart code, from the Themes Playground to your app and use it as its theme. This is a very quick and convenient way to try a theme you made and see in the Themes Playground in your own app.

• Opt in opinionated sub themes minor style changes:

  • Added missing themed background color for SnackBarThemeData when using opt in opinionated sub themes.
  • Tuned the colored text theme on the sub themes that is applied when using the optional colored text themes. The text styles now better match the regular none colored style, and they are a bit more subtle. Text style caption got a bit of opacity. M2 designed widgets like ListTile, depend on it for making more muted subtitles by default for ListTile via the heading level opacity on caption text style. The opacity on it is lower though, to retain a bit more contrast on blended surfaces, while still adhering to the style intent.

    Minor details on the opinionated sub themes may still be tuned and changed slightly as a part of improving them and their appeal. For the text theme coloring future version may expose parameter(s) that can be used to adjust the color tint effect on text theme when colored text theme is enabled.

• Major updates to readme doc, and typo corrections.

• Tests:

  • Modified tests to catch the fixed defaultRadius issue.
  • Added more tests, now total 1069 tests.

v4.0.0 - November 13, 2021

• The breaking case is a minor difference in produced style for true black mode. Version 4.0.0 is still fully API compatible with version 3. Version 4.0.0 does however contain so many new features, that it in itself warrants a new major release bump.

• Breaking: In dark mode, the darkIsTrueBlack now makes surface color 8% darker instead of 6%. This change was needed to support overlay color in dark mode when using darkIsTrueBlack when using the new surfaceMode property. For more information see Flutter SDK issue 90353.

• Fix/Breaking: From the color scheme English descriptions the sentence end "." was removed from all description strings. If and when you want one, you can add it as needed.

• New: Added a more flexible and powerful alpha blending feature for surface and background colors. The new properties in the FlexColorScheme factories light and dark are surfaceMode, of type enum FlexSurfaceMode and integer blendLevel. Consider using them instead of previous surfaceStyle. The surface color blend style surfaceStyle is still default, and not yet deprecated, but may be so in version 5. It is not really needed anymore, but there was no major reason to break things by removing it either.

• New: Major new feature; easy sub-theming of Flutter SDK UI widgets.

  • You can opt in on nice looking opinionated widget sub-themes by setting FlexColorScheme.useSubThemes to true, it is false by default.
  • The default settings for the sub-theme is inspired by Material 3 design (M3) It mimics it to large extent when using default value sub-theme values and settings. The varying corner radius is different per widget type. The new TextTheme Typography is also included. All parts cannot be made to look exactly like M3 in Flutter when using Material 2 design (M2), but many parts can, and where possible the defaults try follow those values. You can of course override the default.
  • You can tweak these sub themes with a number of parameters defined in the FlexSubThemesData class, passed to FlexColorScheme.subThemesData.
  • The FlexSubThemesData class provides parameters for easy adjustment of corner radius in Widgets that use ShapeBorder or decorations, that support changing the Widget's corner radius. With the sub themes enabled, you can easily create a theme with a consistent corner radius on built-in Flutter SDK UI widgets.
  • The widget sub-themes also harmonize a few other styles, e.g. ToggleButtons to match the standard buttons regarding size and design as far as possible.
  • In case you still use the old deprecated buttons, they also get ButtonThemeData that as far as possible match the same style.
  • Via the sub themes it is by default opted-in to also use a bit Material You like coloring on the text styles. This can also be opted out of, even if otherwise opting in on sub-themes, it is on by default when opting in on sub themes.

• New: Added FlexThemeData static extension on ThemeData.

  • FlexColorScheme Themes can now also be created with the new syntax FlexThemeData.light and FlexThemeData.dark, instead of using FlexColorScheme.light().toTheme and FlexColorScheme.dark().toTheme.
  • The toTheme method is still available and works as before. It will not be deprecated. It is needed when making elaborate custom sub themes beyond what is offered when using FlexColorScheme based opt-in sub themes. When you make custom sub themes yourself, you often need access to the ColorScheme that is defined in current FlexColorScheme() instance. You can get it with FlexColorScheme().toScheme. Then use this standard ColorScheme or any of its colors, in your custom sub theme definitions, that you then add with copyWith to your FlexColorScheme based theme, like FlexColorScheme().toTheme.copyWith(..."your sub themes and other ThemeData over-rides here").

• New: Added textTheme and primaryTextTheme properties to FlexColorScheme to enable easy setup of custom TextThemes, without the need to add a custom TextTheme via a copyWith, plus merge with the default text theme.

• New: Added FlexColorScheme.dialogBackground as a background surface color that can be controlled and themed separately.

• New: Added appBarOpacity to FlexColorScheme.light() and dark(). With it, you can apply themed opacity to the AppBar background color to the selected FlexAppBarStyle it is using.

• New: On the FlexColorScheme factories light and dark, exposed the Color properties primary, primaryVariant, secondary, secondaryVariant, appBarBackground, dialogBackground and error. They all default to null, but if provided they can be used as override values to factory behaviors defined by scheme, colors, appBarStyle, surfaceMode and surfaceStyle that otherwise via the factories define the colors for these properties. If a value for one of the new direct color properties is used with the factory, it always has precedence over other properties that assign or compute colors for it.

• New: Exposed boolean property applyElevationOverlayColor. It has the same function as the same property in ThemeData. It applies a semi-transparent overlay color on Material surfaces to indicate elevation for dark themes. In FlexColorScheme it defaults to true. In Flutter ThemeData.from it also default to true, but in ThemeData it defaults to false. The property is just available for convenience, so you can avoid a copyWith if you wish to turn it off. It is not necessarily needed or even desired when using strong alpha blends on surfaces in dark mode, to use an elevation overlay color.

• New: All FlexSchemeData objects in FlexColor are exposed as static const objects, making them easy to pick and reuse as const objects individually in custom color scheme lists, or as input to the colors property. Previously only the individual color value definitions were exposed.

• New: Added convenience extension .blendAlpha() on Color in FlexColorExtensions.

• New: The FlexThemeModeSwitch got a bool property hasTitle, if set to false it removes the title entirely.

• New: The FlexThemeModeSwitch got a buttonOrder property using enum FlexThemeModeButtonOrder that you can use to define the order of its light, system and dark theme mode buttons, in all possible combinations.

• New: Added edgeToEdge support to FlexColorScheme.themedSystemNavigationBar. This brings the previously experimental support for transparent system navigation bar in Android into the supported fold in FlexColorScheme. Its functionality requires min Android SDK level 29, but other than that it works without Android setup shenanigans. No added APIs, the API for it already existed in previous version of FlexColorScheme, using it did however require special Android build configuration setup, this is no longer required.

• Change: The FlexColor.schemesList is now a const for improved efficiency.

• New color schemes: Added four new built-in color schemes. Total number of color schemes is now 36 matched light and dark pairs.

  • Blue whale - Blue whale, jungle green and outrageous tango orange. Use enum value FlexScheme.blueWhale for easy access to it. This theme is final and selected for inclusion as a new one.
  • San Juan blue - San Juan blue and pink salmon theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.sanJuanBlue for easy access to it.
  • Rosewood - Rosewood red, with horses neck and driftwood theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.rosewood for easy access to it.
  • Blumine - Blumine, easter blue and saffron mango theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.blumineBlue for easy access to it.

• Documentation:

  • The new main example is a complete quick start guide that doubles as "developers" hot reload based playground template. It has comments explaining what is going on. If you skip reading the readme docs and tutorial, the example may help to kick-start using FlexColorScheme and all its features. It shows most of the features in last tutorial example 5, but without any interactive UI. You are the UI and can edit prop values and use hot-reload to see changes.
  • All examples now use the new FlexThemeData extension syntax to create the ThemeData and surfaceMode to define the alpha blended surfaces.
  • Examples 2 to 5 also use the in Flutter 2.5 new skeleton architecture, with a ChangeNotifier based controller. AnimatedBuilder to listen to it, and an abstract service to get and persist the theme settings, with a concrete in-memory implementation, plus the implementations to persist the theme.
    • Examples 2 to 4 use the Hive implementation.
    • Example 5 uses the SharedPreferences implementation

• Tests:

  • Added tests for the new features, total 1066 tests.
  • Coverage 99%, will improve them more later.

v4.0.0-dev.1 - November 13, 2021

• See change log for stable 4.0.0, it was the same for the dev release. the text is just not repeated here anymore.

v3.0.1 - July 1, 2021

• Fix: The internal order of swapping primary and secondary colors and reducing used colors in static function FlexSchemeColor.effective(FlexSchemeColor colors, int usedColors, {bool swapColors = false}) matters for the intended result when used together in the same call. The function now swaps primary and secondary colors, before reducing the used colors.
• Tests: Added tests for above fix that captures the issue and fails in version 3.0.0. Total 741 tests, coverage 99.75%.
• Documentation and typo fixes.

v3.0.0 - June 25, 2021

• Breaking: The color accentColor is being deprecated in Flutter SDK ThemeData starting from version v2.3.0-0.1.pre. For more info see Flutter docs here.

  Usage of accentColor in FlexColorScheme is removed to support this transition. The property is deprecated in FlexColorScheme, but it is still present. Its usage does however no longer have any impact on produced themes. This is a potential breaking change. The probability that you might have used it as a property in your FlexColorScheme based theme is low. It was before set to primary color in FlexColorScheme, as a way to make the highlight color of outlines and underlines on text field boxes primary colored in dark theme mode. In default Flutter dark theme they used accentColor that followed colorScheme.secondary color. The old accentColor was previously not used for anything else in themes anymore when using FlexColorScheme. The property is now going away totally in Flutter SDK. The default ThemeData in Flutter SDK in dark mode now creates a theme for outline and underline indicators on input fields that are based on primary color, just like FlexColorScheme always did. The resulting default dark mode style on text fields thus remains unchanged in FlexColorScheme even with this definition removed.

  If you had used accentColor in FlexColorScheme as an unusual way to define a different text field outline or underline color in dark mode than primary color. In that case you will need to recreate this style via a text field decoration theme.

• New: The FlexColorScheme.dark and FlexColorScheme.light factories have a new property called swapColors. If true, this will swap primary and primaryVariant colors with their secondary counter-parts.

  This flag can be set to true if you want to make a theme where your primary and secondary colors are swapped compared to their definition. It is useful if you want to quickly swap primary and secondary colors when using the pre-defined color schemes or with computed dark schemes from light schemes. It doubles the variation possibilities of themes based on the pre-defined color schemes.

  If you are explicitly defining all you light or dark scheme colors, you can of course define them in desired order. This feature will still swap whatever colors you defined for primary and secondary when set to true. You can thus also use this feature as an easy end-user modifiable theme option, if you like to offer the capability to toggle the primary and secondary theme colors the other way around.

• New: The static function FlexSchemeColor.effective(FlexSchemeColor colors, int usedColors, {bool swapColors = false}) is used to implement the above swapColors feature. It also exposes the logic behind the FlexColorScheme dark and light theme usedColors property. This static method is helpful if you need to compute effective built-in theme colors externally to FlexColorScheme to present the active theme, based on these settings. This is used by example 5 to change the colors on the theme mode switch when the swap color settings is toggled. The usedColors property is not shown in any bundled example, but it can be used the same way.

• New color schemes: Added four new built-in color schemes.

  • Bahama and trinidad - Bahama blue and trinidad orange colored theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.bahamaBlue for easy access to it.
  • Mallard and valencia - Mallard green and Valencia pink colored theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.mallardGreen for easy access to it.
  • Espresso and crema - Espresso dark brown and crema colored theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.espresso for easy access to it.
  • Outer space stage - Outer space dark blue-grey and stage red theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.outerSpace for easy access to it.

• Tests: Added tests for the new features and removed test related to accentColor. Total 736 tests, coverage 99.75%.

• Inspired by MaterialYou at GoogleIO 2021, I recently hooked up FlexColorScheme with a Google Dart library that extracts prominent colors from images. Then fed these colors to FlexColorScheme to make themes from them. The above new color schemes in release 3.0.0 came from these image based theme experiments. You can see examples of FlexColorScheme making color schemes and themes from images in my Tweets about it. This was a first quick test of the idea, later I added some more features to it, here and here. These quick tests show that FlexColorScheme is very versatile. It already supports Android 12 like image color branded themes, by wiring extracted image colors, to colors in a FlexColorScheme based theme.

v2.1.1 - March 30, 2021

• Change: Made the VoidCallback onSelect in FlexThemeModeOptionButton nullable. The optional callback allows for the button to be used for example as a trailing widget in a ListTile. Keep it null to not have any callback, nor hover or Ink of its own, and use the select event of the parent instead. When it is used as standalone button you normally want to use this callback, but not if you want the parent to handle it, that use case was not allowed with previous version.

v2.1.0 - March 22, 2021

• Fix: Toggling FlexColorScheme(transparentStatusBar) from true to false, did not restore the Android default status bar scrim, unless the app was completely rebuilt. This has been fixed.
• Fix: When using FlexColorScheme.themedSystemNavigationBar(useDivider) in an AnnotatedRegion, toggling useDivider from true to false, did not remove the system navigation bar divider again, unless the app was completely rebuilt. This has been fixed, see API docs for more info.
• Feature: The FlexColorScheme.themedSystemNavigationBar for styling the system navigation bar got a new convenience property systemNavBarStyle that takes a FlexSystemNavBarStyle enum with values:
  • system for default white system nav bar in light theme and black in dark theme mode.
  • surface the system navigation bar will be the same color as active theme colorScheme.surface color. If your FlexColorScheme definition is set to use primary branded surface and background colors, the same primary color blend that the surface color has received will be used.
  • background the system navigation bar will be the same color as active theme colorScheme.background color. If your FlexColorScheme definition is set to use primary branded surface and background colors, the same primary color blend that the background color has received will be used.
  • scaffoldBackground the system navigation bar will be the same color as active theme scaffoldBackground color. If your FlexColorScheme definition is set to use primary branded surface and background colors, the same primary color blend that the scaffoldBackground color has received will be used.
  • transparent an experimental feature. The goal is to make the system navigation bar fully transparent, showing the background, while navigation buttons float over the background. This feature only works if it is also configured in the Android embedder and on SDK 30 or higher. More information in this example: https://github.com/rydmike/sysnavbar
• Examples: Added status bar scrim, system navigation bar divider, and navigation bar style toggles to example 5. These only work on Android builds and do not have any functionality on the live Web builds.
• Tests: Added tests for the new features. Total 690 tests, coverage 99.75%.

v2.0.0 - March 15, 2021

• First stable release of FlexColorScheme with sound null safety.
• Includes the changes from [2.0.0-nullsafety.1] and [2.0.0-nullsafety.2].
• Breaking: The by default enabled divider for FlexColorScheme.themedSystemNavigationBar has been revised to be disabled by default. To use a divider on the top of the system navigation bar on Android, you have to enabled it manually. This is more in line with expected default behavior.

v2.0.0-nullsafety.2 - March 15, 2021

• Breaking Minor change to the none default tooltipsMatchBackground: true border style, it now uses the theme divider color as its default outline color.
• Breaking: As stated earlier in the documentation, as a planned change for version 2.0.0, the sub theme for FloatingActionButtonThemeData was removed. It is thus now null, just as in a default Flutter ThemeData. It still produces the same theme as before, the ThemeData definition was just no longer needed to do so.
• Features: The static helper FlexColorScheme.themedSystemNavigationBar received three new properties noAppBar, invertStatusIcons and systemNavigationBarDividerColor. The old property nullContextBackground was deprecated and replaced with systemNavigationBarColor. Example 5 has been updated to show how and when these new features can be used.
• Migrated AppBar theming to use the implementation introduced in Flutter 2.0.0 instead of using its own custom implementation for the "white" app bar theme.
• Tests: Number of tests increased from 639 to 661. Coverage 99.78%.
• Documentation: Added thumbnails to Appendix A. This pub.dev version is also to test the thumbnails work and how they look on pub.dev before stable 2.0.0 release.

v2.0.0-nullsafety.1 - February 4, 2021

• First version with null-safety.
• Breaking: Removed the in version 1.3.0 deprecated FlexSchemeSurfaceColors.themeSurface, use FlexSchemeSurfaceColors.surfaceStyle instead.
• Tests: Number of tests were reduced from 723 to 639, when all null related tests were removed.

v1.4.1 - January 31, 2021

• New color schemes: Added four new built-in color schemes.

  • Barossa - Barossa red and cardin green theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.barossa for easy access to it.
  • Shark and orange - Shark grey and orange ecstasy theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.shark for easy access to it.
  • Big stone tulip - Big stone blue and tulip tree yellow theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.bigStone for easy access to it.
  • Damask and lunar - Damask red and lunar green theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.damask for easy access to it.

• Improved: Semantics for the ThemeMode Widget buttons.

• Tests: FlexThemeModeSwitch widget tests, makes and checks for system mode changes.

• Tests: More tests, totally 723 tests, codecov is now > 99.5%.

• CI/CD: Added GitHub actions to automate build and to publish the examples on the Web on a new release.

• Examples: Minor changes to the examples. Modified to not need the late keyword when they are converted to null safe versions.

• Documentation:

  • Added the new color schemes to the documentation.
  • Minor typo corrections.

v1.4.0 - January 18, 2021

• Feature: Added convenience property scheme to FlexColorScheme factories light and dark. This a shortcut for using the built-in color schemes. The colors property can still be used as before. The .light and .dark factories no longer have any required properties. If scheme is not provided it defaults to FlexScheme.material and if both scheme and colors are provided, the scheme provided via colors prevail.

• Examples: Updated the simple example 1 to use the new scheme property, as in theme: FlexColorScheme.light(scheme: FlexScheme.mandyRed).toTheme.

• Feature: Added experimental support for transparent system navigation bar for Android for SDK >= 30 (Android 11). The support is added via new opacity property in FlexColorScheme.themedSystemNavigationBar.

  A separate example that builds on example 5, shows and explains how and when transparent system navigation bar can be used in Android. It also shows how to make it look nice when using primary color branded background color applied to the system navigation bar in Android, that is used when transparency is not supported. While if supported, your app otherwise uses a transparent system navigation. Please see this separate small stand-alone example Android project sysnavbar on GitHub for more information.

• Tests: Added more tests, now 689 tests. All color values used are now also tested, any modification to them is considered a breaking change. A bit more tests would still be nice, for the ThemeModeSwitch Widget at least. Total test coverage > 98%, it will do for now.

• Documentation:

  • Changed example one and the intro, to use the new simpler scheme property when using built-in schemes.
  • Added a section that lists which sub-themes, and which of their properties, are NOT null when creating a theme data object with FlexColorScheme.toTheme.
  • Removed the "back to content" link after each chapter. It was nice and worked fine on GitHub, but for some reason it did not on pub.dev.
  • Tried finding and adding comments for the 3 missing API comments needed to reach 100% API documentation comments, not sure if it succeeded. I will see when the update is published.

v1.3.0 - January 7, 2021

• Marked FlexSchemeSurfaceColors.themeSurface as deprecated in favor of the correctly named FlexSchemeSurfaceColors.surfaceStyle version. The older themeSurface will be removed when null safe Version 2.0.0 is officially released as the main version.
• Added Diagnosticable mixin to classes FlexSchemeOnColors, FlexSchemeSurfaceColors and FlexColorScheme, that all also received proper identity overrides and copyWith methods.
• Improved internal null safe behavior, with fall-backs values in some classes and helper functions. It might make migration to null-safety easier.
• Added 389 tests. Coverage is 89% based on Codecov report. Will add more tests later, enough for now.
• The tests will make the migration to null-safety easier by providing some quality control checks.
• Added GitHub actions to run all the tests and automated test coverage analysis with Codecov.
• Documentation improvements and API doc fixes. In previous version API-doc analysis says "441 out of 444 API elements (99.3 %) have documentation comments.". I have not been able to find any missing ones. The result from this update will only be seen after it has been uploaded, but I doubt it will change much. If somebody happens to find the missing doc comments let my know, the IDE analyzer does not find them either.

v1.2.0 - January 4, 2021

• Added four new built-in color schemes.

  • Amber blue - Amber blaze and blue color theme, based on Material amber and blue accent colors. Use enum value FlexScheme.amber for easy access to it.
  • Vesuvius burned - Vesuvius burned orange and eden green theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.vesuviusBurn for easy access to it.
  • Deep purple - Deep purple daisy bush theme, based on Material deepPurple and lightBlueAccent colors. Use enum value FlexScheme.deepPurple for easy access to it.
  • Ebony clay - Ebony clay dark blue-grey and watercourse green colored theme. Use enum value FlexScheme.ebonyClay for easy access to it.

• Added a style option for the tab bar. The FlexColorScheme created tab bar theme now defaults to a TabBarTheme that fits its created AppBarTheme, also works via the factory app bar style options. There is also an optional style that makes the tab bar theme suitable for surface and background colors. This was the default style before. The change to this default style is a fix to make the default TabBarTheme one that fits on app bar's instead, which is expected default behavior in Flutter and Material design. The style is set via the FlexColorScheme property tabBarStyle using enum values FlexTabBarStyle.forAppBar (default) and FlexTabBarStyle.forBackground.

• The themed AppBar and BottomAppBar elevations still default to 0. For convenience, the themed values can now both be modified directly via the FlexColorScheme properties appBarElevation and bottomAppBarElevation, without need to change these frequently modified values with an extra copyWith to get them re-themed as desired. When using the recommended FlexColorScheme.light and FlexColorScheme.dark factories, appBarElevation defaults to '0', if not defined and bottomAppBarElevation defaults to appBarElevation, if not defined. When using the default constructor (the factories are recommended), they both default to '0'.

Example updates

• All examples: The widget showcase now show the resulting themed tab bar on two different backgrounds, one on the app bar color and one on background color. This can guide you in which tab bar style is right for your use case.
• Example 4 and 5: The sub-page now has a demo tab bar in the app bar, and a demo bottom navigation bar.
• Example 5: Now includes a toggle that can be used to select the tab bar theme style.
• Example 5: Now includes a slider to modify the themed app bar elevation.
• Example 5: The Roboto font that is always used by the examples regardless of platform, is now also used when you create the theme from the scheme with the ThemeData.from(colorScheme). It looked a bit odd when it changed to platform default font on Desktop and Web versions, while FlexColorScheme.toTheme used Roboto. This was modified so that the resulting themes use the same font and are thus more comparable.

v1.1.1 - December 31, 2020

• Updated example 5 to include UI that can be used to vary the computed dark themes white blend percentage level. This was added to better demonstrate the toDark feature.
• Added a defaultError modifier that enables the built-in schemes to use the Material design guide's default dark error color when using the toDark method to compute a dark scheme from a light scheme. The toDark method can be used without the defaultError scheme modifier, but then the error color also changes with the other computed dark scheme colors when using toDark method and the level adjustment. This is not necessarily the desired behavior. The fix enables the alternative more often desired behavior and ensures that the dark error color just uses the default value. For custom schemes that do not specify a custom error color for their light scheme and thus default to the Material Guide's standard error color, the fix is not needed. Example 5 demonstrates the use case of defaultError as well.
• Major documentation review and updates.

v1.1.0 - December 29, 2020

• Added API to make a matching dark scheme from a light scheme. See FlexSchemeColor.toDark.
• Added a showSystemMode property to FlexThemeModeSwitch. It defaults to true. Set it to false, to exclude the system setting based theme mode option.
• Added static method FlexColorScheme.comfortablePlatformDensity.
• Added static method FlexColorScheme.themedSystemNavigationBar that can be used to assist with theming the system navigation bar via an annotated region. See updated example 5, for a demo on how to use it.
• Added API property FlexColorScheme.transparentStatusBar to allow opting out of the one-toned AppBar in Android.
• Updated the examples.
  • All examples now use the new platform adaptive FlexColorScheme.comfortablePlatformDensity as their visualDensity setting. The Flutter default compact mode for desktop and web goes a bit overboard in its compactness. This optional setting presents an alternative where comfortable density is used on desktops and Web, while devices keep their standard visual density. Just omit the setting if you prefer Flutter's super compact Web and Desktop widgets.
  • Example 3 excludes the system theme mode option, just to show this new feature of the switch.
  • Example 4 includes all built-in schemes, plus 3 custom ones, including one where the dark scheme is made with the toDark method. Example 4 also includes a sub-page that can be opened to see the same theme on a new page.
  • Example 5 now includes an option make all the dark mode schemes with the toDark option, so it can be toggled and compared to the hand-tuned versions. The same custom color scheme as in example 4 are also included. Example 5 also has the same sub-page as example 4. Example 5 now also show how to solve the issue that the system navigation bar does not get color scheme and theme mode appropriate style in Android when we change the theme. This improvement is done with an AnnotatedRegion and the new static helper method FlexColorScheme.themedSystemNavigationBar.
• Documentation updates and typo corrections.

v1.0.0 - December 21, 2020

• Version 1.0.0 released
• Documentation layout updates and typo corrections.

v1.0.0-dev.2 - December 21, 2020

• Made planned API name changes, SchemeOnColors -> FlexSchemeOnColors and SchemeSurfaceColors -> FlexSchemeSurfaceColors. These are lower level APIs that are only used when making custom on and surface colors. Changed ThemeModeOptionButton -> FlexThemeModeOptionButton, this is a lower level API that can be used when making more advanced custom theme selection controls that are based on the same button that the FlexThemeModeSwitch uses.
• Exposed planned configuration APIs for the FlexThemeModeSwitch and FlexThemeModeOptionButton.
• Removed the constants that had no function in the public interface from the API.
• Documentation updates and corrections.
• Removed legacy usage of deprecated ThemeData properties textSelectionColor, cursorColor and textSelectionHandleColor. They are no longer needed even for stable channel, they were useful earlier but not anymore, using only TextSelectionThemeData is enough in the latest stable version.

v1.0.0-dev.1 - December 17, 2020

• First development pre-release on pub.dev.

---

Known General Issues

• The color branding is not applied to Widgets using elevated Material of type canvas in Flutter when using primary colored surface and backgrounds, and the theme's applyElevationOverlayColor: true is true. This is caused by this Flutter SDK issue and limitation. Version 4.0.0 addresses this limitation by introducing more color blend modes that keep the colors equal in order to not be affected by this limitation. If you are using heavy color branding in dark theme mode, the overlay color is not really necessary. Material 3 (You) is, based on some code comments seen on the NavigationBar, maybe leaning this way too.

---

Planned Updates and New Features

These are the topics I currently have on the TODO list for this package. Have a new suggestion and idea? Feel free to open a suggestion or issue in the repo. There is also a project where active and recent TODOs are tracked here.

PLANNED

• All past planned features have been done and delivered with version 5, and much more actually. Future planned topics will be listed in the documentation.

DONE

• Created own documentation site for FlexColorScheme.
• Version 5.0.0 Added a sub-theme for the NavigationRail.
• Version 5.0.0 Added SchemeColor color selection to buttons and toggle buttons.
• Version 5.0.0 Added support for Material.
• Version 5.0.0 Added AppBar with optional SchemeColor based color selection.
• Version 5.0.0 Added SchemeColor selection to TabBar
• Version 5.0.0 Added SchemeColor color selection to the Floating Action Button sub-theme.
• Version 4.2.0 support making themes from standard ColorScheme. More customization of sub-themes. Support for M3 NavigationBar and sub-theming it, and a default that matches FlexColorScheme styles.
• Version 4.0.0 Docs with quick start example first.
• Version 4.0.0 Added a more complex example that also persists theme.
• Version 4.0.0 Added API offering more flexibility and customization capabilities to the surface color branding.
• Version 3.0.0 Deprecated accentColor. Swap primary and secondary colors feature added. Added 4 new color schemes.
• Version 2.0.0 Release official null-safe version, when nullsafety is available in Flutter stable channel.
• Version 2.0.0-nullsafety.2: Minor new APIs and features added. Example 5 updated.
• Since #71184 landed in Flutter 2.0.0. The past custom "white" AppBarTheme implementation was as planned changed to the new one that is supported by the SDK.
• Version 2.0.0-nullsafety.1 released
• Version 1.4.1 Added automated build and publish pipes for the Web examples!
• Version 1.4.1 More tests, tests are now considered sufficient for current features.
• Version 1.4.0: Increased unit and widget test to 689 tests. All color definitions are now also tested to ensure they will not be changed by any accidental edit. Test coverage is higher than 95%, certainly sufficient for this type of package, but there are still some areas that could and will be improved.
• Version 1.3.0: Added 195 unit and widgets tests, mostly unit tests.
• API to assist with themed annotated region for system navigation bar theming.
• API to opt-out from one-toned AppBar and return it to Android's default two-toned.
• Add API that allows us to use an additional extra color definition for ThemeData.accentColor to easily make themes with custom input border color in dark-mode.
• Add API the can create the dark scheme based on a light scheme's colors.
• Release version 1.0.0 on pub.dev.
• Review and correct documentation mistakes and typos, first pass anyway.
• Review and update the API.
• Publish live Web versions of the five examples.
• Complete the documentation.
• Release first version 1.0.0-dev.1 publicly on GitHub and pub.dev.

MAYBE

These maybes were on the PLANNED agenda earlier, however for version 5 and Material 3 the correct alternative was to replace swatches with the Material 3 design based color utilities called material_color_utilities that the Flutter SDK also depends on. While I don't like adding a none SDK library to the package, if Flutter SDK uses it as well, then why not. It would still be nice to have the actual Material 2 swatch algorithm in Dart as well, then we could:

• Use actual Material 2 color shades when a Material color is selected as primary color, for its light/dark shades.

• For this we need to find and use the color algorithm Google uses on its Material colors site here and here.

• The algorithms for them are actually even a bit different. The second link also seems to imply that color schemes should have had primary and secondary colors, with light and dark variants. Instead of using just one variant color, like past ColorScheme class in Flutter did. This of course all changed with the updated Material 3 ColorScheme, that deprecated the variant colors. As for the actual old Material 2 swatch algorithm see these sources: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32942503/material-design-color-palette Starting points here:

  • https://github.com/eugeneford/material-palette-generator
  • https://github.com/mbitson/mcg/issues/19
  • https://github.com/edelstone/material-palette-generator

OUT OF SCOPE

Serialization of FlexColorScheme

Including built-in serialization of FlexColorScheme, and its key classes has been suggested. I consider FlexColorScheme to be functionally on a level similar to ThemeData and ColorScheme. Therefore, it should not cover serialization of itself. Serialization have to deal with a lot of potential failure points that I think should not have to be a concern in this type of component. I am not planning to add it.

My recommendation for saving the state of a FlexColorScheme is to include values for its settings that you use in your implementation in other models in your application, like an "AppSettings" model or similar.

You probably serialize and store such data already, perhaps with shared preferences, hive, get_storage or some other solution. Include the values you need for your FlexColorScheme implementation in your stored settings and then use those values to restore your FlexColorScheme configuration and theme. This way, your implementation also remain in control of what it needs to store and restore.

From version 4.0.0 a simple approach using the architecture introduced via the Flutter "skeleton" template in Flutter version 2.5 was used together with Shared Preferences and Hive to persist and load FlexColorScheme on start. This is just one example, other implementations together with Riverpod, Provider, Flutter Bloc, GetX etc., and completely different local persistence packages work well too.