native_kit 0.1.1

One Dart call invokes the real OS-native UI on iOS and Android - system sheets, alerts, zero-permission pickers, scanners, share, print and haptics.

native_kit

One Dart call invokes the real OS-level UI. native_kit presents genuine system view controllers, sheets, zero-permission pickers and hardware scanners on iOS (UIKit / SwiftUI / VisionKit / PencilKit) and Android (Material 3 / Jetpack / ML Kit / system intents) — no Flutter look-alikes, no Swift or Kotlin to write.

final choice = await NativeKit.showActionSheet(
  context: context, // anchors the iPad popover + syncs your theme
  items: const [
    NativeMenuItem(id: 'share', title: 'Share', iosSymbol: 'square.and.arrow.up'),
    NativeMenuItem(id: 'delete', title: 'Delete', style: NativeActionStyle.destructive),
  ],
);

Why native_kit

	Drawn by Flutter	Drawn by the OS with native_kit
Date picker	showDatePicker / CupertinoDatePicker look-alikes	UIDatePicker on iOS, MaterialDatePicker on Android
Action sheet & menus	Re-created widgets	UIAlertController + UIEditMenuInteraction, Material 3 sheets + ListPopupWindow
Color picker	Third-party widgets	UIColorPickerViewController with the system eyedropper
OS redesigns (e.g. iOS 26 Liquid Glass)	Wait for widgets to be re-implemented	Picked up from the OS
Photos, contacts, documents	Often require permissions	Out-of-process system pickers, no permission prompts
Scanners, OCR, subject lift	Camera plugin + ML wiring	VisionKit / Vision and ML Kit in one call

One dependency covers photo / contact / document pickers, document saving, calendar events, a location picker, share sheet, QuickLook-style preview, in-app browser, printing, translation, dictionary, speech-to-text, biometrics, in-app review, haptics, system panels, document and barcode scanning, OCR, background removal, ink markup and video trimming.

See it run

The same Dart call on iOS (left) and Android (right), recorded from the example app by its UI test suites:

Highlights

• 30 unified components across 6 domains, 32 typed methods.
• Clean Dart models — DateTime, Color, Rect, Uint8List and typed result classes. Transport DTOs are never exposed.
• Context aware — pass a BuildContext and the native UI anchors on that widget (iPad-safe popovers) and follows the Flutter theme's brightness and primary color.
• No hanging futures — swipe-to-dismiss, back and predictive-back gestures always resolve the call (with null, false or an empty list).
• No MainActivity changes — Android activity results run through a headless fragment, even with a plain FlutterActivity.
• Tested on real system UI — XCUITest and UI Automator suites drive every component on the iOS Simulator and an Android emulator.

Installation

flutter pub add native_kit

import 'package:native_kit/native_kit.dart';

Platform setup

iOS (16.0+)

Set platform :ios, '16.0' in ios/Podfile (Swift Package Manager is supported too). Add the usage descriptions for the components you use to ios/Runner/Info.plist:

Key	Needed by
NSCameraUsageDescription	scanDocument, scanCode, extractLiveText (camera)
NSMicrophoneUsageDescription, NSSpeechRecognitionUsageDescription	listenSpeechPrompt
NSFaceIDUsageDescription	authenticate on Face ID devices
NSCalendarsUsageDescription	createCalendarEvent on iOS 16 only (iOS 17+ needs none)

Missing keys never crash the app: the call throws a NativeKitException with NativeKitErrorCode.missingUsageDescription.

Android (API 26+)

Set minSdk = 26 in android/app/build.gradle(.kts). That's it: the plugin ships its own manifest entries (a transparent host activity, a FileProvider, package-visibility queries and the install-time INTERNET, VIBRATE and USE_BIOMETRIC permissions). ML Kit models are downloaded by Google Play services on first use.

Architecture

            ┌──────────────────────── packages/native_kit ────────────────────────┐
 App code ─▶│ NativeKit.showAlert(context: …)  →  domain models → Pigeon DTOs     │
            └──────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┘
                                               │ NativeKitPlatform (6 Pigeon host APIs)
            ┌──────────────── native_kit_platform_interface ──────────────────────┐
            │ pigeons/native_kit_api.dart → Dart / Swift / Kotlin                 │
            └───────────────┬─────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                            ▼                                 ▼
   native_kit_ios (Swift, @MainActor)              native_kit_android (Kotlin, coroutines)
   OverlaysHandler · ValuePickersHandler ·         same 6 handlers, Material 3 + Jetpack,
   ZeroPermPickersHandler · VisionAndMediaHandler  NativeKitResultFragment for every
   SystemUtilitiesHandler · SecurityAndHardware…   ActivityResultContract

Every call carries an optional NativeRect (the calling widget's global rect) and NativeThemeConfig (brightness + seed color) extracted from the BuildContext.

Components

Module 1 — Overlays

Dart method	iOS	Android
showAlert	UIAlertController(.alert) + addTextField	MaterialAlertDialogBuilder + TextInputEditText
showActionSheet	UIAlertController(.actionSheet) (iPad popover)	Material 3 BottomSheetDialog list
showContextMenu	UIMenu via UIEditMenuInteraction	ListPopupWindow at the anchor
showNativeTooltip	.popover UIViewController with arrow	Material 3 PopupWindow card with arrow
showAdaptiveSheet	UISheetPresentationController detents	BottomSheetDialog + BottomSheetBehavior

Module 2 — Value pickers

Dart method	iOS	Android
pickDateTime / pickDateRange	UIDatePicker in a .medium() sheet	MaterialDatePicker / MaterialTimePicker
pickColor	UIColorPickerViewController (eyedropper, alpha)	Material 3 sheet: preview, hex, ARGB / HSL sliders
pickValueWheel	multi-column UIPickerView sheet	NumberPicker row in a BottomSheetDialog
pickFont	UIFontPickerViewController	searchable system typeface sheet

Module 3 — Zero-permission pickers

Dart method	iOS	Android
pickMedia	PHPickerViewController	PickVisualMedia / PickMultipleVisualMedia
pickContact	CNContactPickerViewController	PickContact / ACTION_PICK + ContentResolver
pickDocument	UIDocumentPickerViewController(forOpeningContentTypes:asCopy:)	OpenDocument / OpenMultipleDocuments
saveDocument	UIDocumentPickerViewController(forExporting:asCopy:)	CreateDocument + stream write
createCalendarEvent	EKEventEditViewController (.ics QuickLook on iOS 16)	ACTION_INSERT on CalendarContract.Events
pickLocation	MKMapView + MKLocalSearchCompleter sheet	map sheet + android.location.Geocoder

Module 4 — Vision & media

Dart method	iOS	Android
scanDocument	VNDocumentCameraViewController → JPEGs + PDFDocument	ML Kit GmsDocumentScanner
scanCode	DataScannerViewController / AVCaptureMetadataOutput	GmsBarcodeScanner (no camera permission)
extractLiveText	VNRecognizeTextRequest / DataScannerViewController(.text())	ML Kit Text Recognition + review sheet
extractImageSubject	VNGenerateForegroundInstanceMaskRequest (iOS 17+)	ML Kit Subject Segmentation
showMarkupSheet	PKCanvasView + PKToolPicker	low-latency Canvas full-screen dialog
trimVideo	UIVideoEditorController	trim sheet with MediaExtractor + MediaMuxer

Module 5 — System utilities

Dart method	iOS	Android
share	UIActivityViewController	Intent.createChooser + FileProvider
previewFile	QLPreviewController	PdfRenderer pager / ACTION_VIEW
openInAppBrowser	SFSafariViewController (.pageSheet)	CustomTabsIntent (Partial Custom Tabs)
printDocument	UIPrintInteractionController (+ UIMarkupTextPrintFormatter)	PrintManager + PrintDocumentAdapter / PrintHelper
showTranslationSheet	SwiftUI .translationPresentation (iOS 17.4+)	ACTION_PROCESS_TEXT / ACTION_TRANSLATE / TTS sheet
showDictionaryLookUp	UIReferenceLibraryViewController	ACTION_DEFINE / Partial Custom Tab search
listenSpeechPrompt	SFSpeechRecognizer + AVAudioEngine sheet	RecognizerIntent.ACTION_RECOGNIZE_SPEECH

Module 6 — Security & hardware

Dart method	iOS	Android
authenticate	LAContext.evaluatePolicy	BiometricPrompt / KeyguardManager
requestAppReview	StoreKit AppStore.requestReview(in:)	Play ReviewManager (+ store fallback)
triggerHaptic	UIImpact/Notification/SelectionFeedbackGenerator, CHHapticEngine	HapticFeedbackConstants, VibrationEffect
showSystemPanel	AVRoutePickerView, NEHotspotConfigurationManager, MPVolumeView, RPScreenRecorder	MediaRouter2 switcher, Settings.Panel.*, MediaProjectionManager

Usage

// Anchored, themed action sheet (popover on iPad).
final choice = await NativeKit.showActionSheet(
  context: buttonContext,
  items: const [
    NativeMenuItem(id: 'share', title: 'Share', iosSymbol: 'square.and.arrow.up'),
    NativeMenuItem(id: 'delete', title: 'Delete', style: NativeActionStyle.destructive),
  ],
);

// Zero-permission photo picker.
final List<PickedMedia> photos = await NativeKit.pickMedia(
  type: NativeMediaType.images,
  selectionLimit: 5,
);

// Native color picker returns a Flutter Color.
final Color? color = await NativeKit.pickColor(context: context);

// Document scanner returns page JPEGs and a combined PDF.
final DocumentScanResult? scan = await NativeKit.scanDocument();

// The instance API is the same surface, handy for dependency injection.
final NativeKitClient kit = NativeKit.instance;
await kit.triggerHaptic(HapticType.success);

Error handling

Cancellation is never an error. Real failures throw NativeKitException with a NativeKitErrorCode: noUiContext, unavailable (e.g. VisionKit on the simulator), invalidArgument, missingUsageDescription, permissionDenied, ioError or nativeError.

try {
  await NativeKit.scanCode();
} on NativeKitException catch (e) {
  if (e.code == NativeKitErrorCode.unavailable) showFallbackUi();
}

Platform notes

• Files returned to Dart (media, documents, scans, cutouts, trimmed videos) are copies in the app's temporary / cache directory. Move what you keep.
• pickLocation on Android renders OpenStreetMap tiles by default. Pass androidTileUrlTemplate to use your own tile server in production.
• showSystemPanel(SystemPanel.screenCapture) records in-app on iOS (call it again to stop and receive the movie) and returns the MediaProjection consent result on Android.
• showSystemPanel(SystemPanel.nfc) is Android only.

Packages

Package	Purpose
native_kit	App-facing API (this package)
native_kit_platform_interface	Pigeon contract and NativeKitPlatform
native_kit_ios	iOS implementation
native_kit_android	Android implementation

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Missing a native component? Request it — new components are added to the shared Pigeon bridge for both platforms.