flutter_print 0.5.1

A Flutter plugin focusing on print, that's it. PDF, image, widget and other content.

flutter_print

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

Print PDF, image and other files, or any widget, with print options, on Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Linux and Web.

Usage

import 'package:flutter_print/flutter_print.dart';

final printers = await FlutterPrint.listPrinters();

// Print directly, or review the settings in the print dialog first.
await FlutterPrint.print('/path/to/document.pdf');
await FlutterPrint.printPreview('/path/to/document.pdf', context: context);

await FlutterPrint.print(
  '/path/to/document.pdf',
  options: PrintOptions(
    printerAddress: printers.first.address, // Default printer when omitted.
    pageSize: PaperSizes.a4, // Or PageSize(name: '', width: w, height: h).
    margins: PageMargins(top: 10, bottom: 10, left: 15, right: 15), // mm
    copies: 2,
    landscape: false,
    color: true,
    duplexMode: DuplexMode.longEdge,
    pageRanges: [PageRange(start: 1, end: 3), PageRange(start: 5, end: 5)],
  ),
);

On the web, the file path is a URL from the page's origin or a Blob URL, and the browser's print dialog is always shown.

Widgets

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

// Print, or use printWidgetPreview to open the print dialog.
await FlutterPrint.printWidget(
  (ctx) => Theme(data: Theme.of(ctx), child: MyReceiptWidget()),
  context: context,
  options: PrintOptions(pageSize: PaperSizes.a4),
);

// Get PNG bytes to show before printing.
final png = await FlutterPrint.previewWidget(...);

Platform support

	Android	iOS	macOS	Windows	Linux	Web
print		✔️¹	✔️	✔️	✔️
printPreview	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
listPrinters			✔️	✔️	✔️
printerAddress		✔️¹	✔️	✔️	✔️
pageSize	✔️		✔️	✔️²	✔️
margins	✔️		✔️
copies			✔️	✔️²	✔️
landscape	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️²	✔️
color	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️²	✔️
duplexMode	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️²	✔️
pageRanges			✔️	✔️²	✔️

Where print is unsupported, it opens the print dialog. Unsupported options are ignored.

¹ With an address from FlutterPrint.ios?.pickPrinter(). printPreview ignores it.
² Supported file types only, see File types. Files printed by their default app ignore it.

File types

Platform	PDF & images	Text documents	Other files
Android	✔️
iOS	✔️
macOS	✔️	✔️¹	printPreview opens the default app
Windows	✔️	✔️²	Printed by the default app, with its own settings
Linux	✔️	✔️	✔️ (CUPS)
Web	✔️	✔️	✔️ (browser)

Unsupported files fail with UNSUPPORTED_FILE.

¹ Plain text, RTF, HTML, Word and OpenDocument (macOS 11+).
² Any text file, detected by its content, printed as plain text. EMF and WMF print as vectors.

Images

JPEG, PNG, BMP and GIF print everywhere. TIFF prints everywhere but Android.

Format	Android	iOS	macOS	Windows	Linux
WebP	✔️	14+	11+	✔️¹	✔️²
HEIC	9+	✔️	✔️	✔️¹	✔️²

¹ With the codec from the Microsoft Store (HEIC is built into Windows 11). Any other format with a WIC codec prints too (AVIF, JPEG XL, RAW…).
² With webp-pixbuf-loader for WebP, libheif and heif-pixbuf-loader for HEIC.

Setup

macOS

Add the print entitlement to macos/Runner/Release.entitlements and macos/Runner/DebugProfile.entitlements. No other entitlement is needed.

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

Windows

x64 only. The first build downloads PDFium and bundles pdfium.dll. Ship its licence notices (LICENSE and licenses/ in build/windows/x64/_deps/pdfium-src/) with your app.

Linux

Install the CUPS development libraries to build, and run the CUPS service to print:

sudo apt install libcups2-dev   # Debian / Ubuntu
sudo dnf install cups-devel     # Fedora / RHEL
sudo pacman -S cups             # Arch

In a Flatpak or Snap sandbox, printPreview uses the desktop print dialog (xdg-desktop-portal), where page ranges and orientation may be ignored. Set GTK_USE_PORTAL=1 to use it outside a sandbox. print and listPrinters still need CUPS: --socket=cups for Flatpak, the cups plug for Snap.