flutter_floating_particles 2.0.0

Animated particle effects for Flutter. Snow, rain, confetti, fireworks, hearts and more, with emitters, bursts, physics, touch interaction, images, SVGs and widgets.

2.0.0

Breaking changes

• ParticlePainter is no longer exported. Use ParticleEffects, which can now be used without a child as a standalone layer.
• ParticleType gains streak, path, snowflake, sparkle, petal, raindrop, ring, triangle and diamond. ParticleDirection gains none and radial, and ParticleEffectType gains the new presets. Exhaustive switch statements over these enums need the new cases.
• velocityMultiplier, enableSizeVariation, onAnimationComplete and loadingWidget previously had no effect and now work, so effects that set them look or behave differently.
• Glow now adds a halo around a sharp particle instead of blurring the whole particle. Use enableBlur for a soft look.
• The rain preset now uses the new streak shape, and the snow preset uses slowly spinning snowflakes (sized 4–12 instead of 2–8). fireAshes and the new fireflies preset use additive blending.
• Custom widget particles are rendered once at maxSize and scaled per particle, instead of being laid out at each particle's size.
• ParticleCoverage moved to particle_coverage.dart (it is still exported from the main library) and gained a fraction getter.
• Requires Flutter 3.32 or later.

Performance

• All particles are drawn from pre-rendered sprites, packed into one atlas, in a single drawRawAtlas call, with glow and blur baked into the sprite instead of being applied to every particle on every frame.
• Animation runs on a Ticker that repaints the painter directly: no widget rebuilds, no DateTime.now() per particle, and no per-particle allocations.
• The ticker stops while the effect is disabled, paused, frozen for reduced motion, or has nothing to animate.
• adaptiveQuality draws fewer particles while frames miss their budget, and ParticleConfig.maxParticles caps the number of particles drawn at once.
• Removed the http and vector_math dependencies. Images load through Flutter's ImageProviders (with Flutter's image cache and web support), and SVGs through flutter_svg's loaders.

New features

• ParticleController to pause, resume and burst() particles, with gravity, drag, spread, direction and lifespan.
• ParticleInteraction: particles move away from or toward the pointer, or burst on tap, without blocking the child.
• layer: ParticleLayer.background to paint particles behind the child.
• The child is now optional, so the widget can be used as a standalone particle layer.
• respectReduceMotion (default true) freezes particles when the platform asks for reduced motion.
• clipBehavior keeps particles within the widget's bounds.
• ParticleType.streak for rain, and ParticleType.path with customPath for any custom shape.
• ParticleDirection.none (wandering in place) and ParticleDirection.radial (flying outward from the center).
• ParticleConfig.image accepts any ImageProvider.
• New ParticleConfig options: seed, wind, driftAmplitude, edgeFade, blendMode and rotationSpeed.
• ParticleConfig.copyWith, and asserts for invalid configurations.
• New fireflies and starfield presets. ParticleEffectType.config returns the preset for each effect type.
• ParticleEffects.preloadImageProvider.
• Emitters (ParticleConfig.emitters) that continuously spawn particles from a point, area or moving widget, with fountain, smoke and fireworks presets.
• Controller presets: explode, confettiCannon, fireworks (shells that rise and explode), and burstFromKey to burst out of any widget.
• ParticleLifecycle: size, opacity and color over each particle's life.
• ParticleTrail: fading tails behind particles.
• ParticleSplash: rain splashes where particles reach the end of their path.
• ParticleConnections: lines between nearby particles and the pointer.
• depthEffect: small particles move slower and look fainter, like they're farther away.
• parallax and ScrollParallax: particles shift with scrolling (or tilt).
• colliders: particles pile up on and bounce off widgets.
• Mixing several particle types (particleTypes) or images (images) in one effect.
• Seven new shapes: snowflake, sparkle, petal, raindrop, ring, triangle and diamond.
• ParticleInteraction.popOnTap and onParticleTap to pop tapped particles, and emitOnDrag to paint particles with a finger.
• ParticleController.timeScale (slow motion), seek and reset.
• ParticleConfig.toJson and ParticleConfig.fromJson. fromJson accepts hand-written and partial JSON: values of the wrong type use their defaults and out-of-range values are clamped, so any JSON object gives a valid configuration.
• The example Playground can import JSON as well as export it.
• New presets: fireworks, sakura, network and blizzard.

Bug fixes

• Fixed failed image loads (e.g. a 404 URL) being retried on every frame.
• Fixed ParticleConfig equality ignoring gradientColors, so color-only changes now regenerate particles.
• Fixed different custom widgets of the same type sharing one cached image, and custom widget snapshots being blurry on high-density screens.
• Fixed setState being called after dispose while images were loading.
• Fixed particles vanishing mid-screen and snapping at cycle boundaries. Particles now enter and leave off-screen (or fade out with partial particleCoverage), and diagonal particles are spread across the screen.
• Fixed cached images, codecs, SVG pictures and offscreen render trees not being disposed.
• Fixed SVG decoding of non-ASCII content and stretching of non-square SVGs.
• Changing animationDuration no longer makes particles jump.
• Popped (or collided) particles that wander in place (ParticleDirection.none) now come back after a cycle instead of staying hidden forever.
• Streak particles now point along their motion even when mixed with other types in particleTypes.
• Fixed square outlines and stray lines around particles on Impeller's OpenGL ES backend (most Android devices).
• Fixed custom widget particles failing with "Invalid image dimensions" when created while the app starts (e.g. on Android).

1.0.2

• Significant performance optimization for low-end devices:
  • Implemented RepaintBoundary for GPU-accelerated animation layering.
  • Optimized rendering of complex shapes with cached paths.
• Added new ParticleType.leaf for realistic falling leaves effect.
• Added support for network images in ParticleType.image. Support both HTTP/HTTPS URLs.
• Added support for SVG images (both local assets and network URLs) via flutter_svg.

1.0.1

• Fixed Dart analysis warnings and lints across the package and example.
• Improved performance by using const constructors where applicable.
• Updated deprecated API usage for better compatibility with recent Flutter versions.
• Improved unit test robustness by disabling debug banners during testing.

1.0.0

• initial draft of the Flutter Floating particles.