Setting up Flutter development environment for Windows

5 min readSep 5, 2021

As a developer, I’ve always wanted to try out flutter for a long time. When I started with Flutter, Setting it up ate a lot of my time, I had to go through various tutorials, and articles to set up the development environment. I’m writing this blog as I don’t want my fellow developers to face the errors that I had to, during the process.

System Requirements:

To install and run Flutter, your development environment must meet these minimum requirements:

Operating Systems: Windows 7 SP1 or later (64-bit), x86–64 based.
Disk Space: 1.64 GB (does not include disk space for IDE/tools).
Tools: Flutter depends on these tools being available in your environment.
Windows PowerShell 5.0 or newer (this is pre-installed with Windows 10)
Git for Windows 2. x, with the Use Git from the Windows Command Prompt option.
If Git for Windows is already installed, make sure you can run git commands from the command prompt or PowerShell.

Things to Download/Install:

The following are what you are going to download/install during the process:

Flutter SDK

SDK — Software Development Kit

Andriod Studio
Java SE Development Kit
Git for windows
VS Code (Visual Studio Code)

Let’s get started, shall we?

Flutter SDK(Software Development Kit):

A clip from https://flutter.dev/docs/get-started/install/windows

You can download the latest stable version of Flutter SDK from the Official Flutter installation documentation. The current stable version for windows is 2.2.3-stable, which might not be the same when you’re reading this blog. Download the latest version that is available at that time.

Extract Flutter SDK from .zip
Create a folder in your C: Drive C:\src and paste the extracted flutter SDK.

Now go inside the flutter folder and then into the bin.
Copy the path of the bin.

Open your windows search and type env.

Now open the “Edit environment variables for your account”.

Double click path

Click Newand paste the path of the flutter\bin and click “Ok”.
Now, open your cmd (or any terminal window) and type this.

where flutter dart

If you get the location of flutter and dart files, you have successfully installed flutter SDK and set its path 🥳.

Java SE Development Kit:

If you already have JDK installed on your pc, make sure that you’ve set it to the path “JAVA_HOME”.

Now, let's set up Java SE :

Download “Java SE 8” from JDK SE 8 DOWNLOAD.
Under “Java SE Development Kit 8u301”, you’ll see this

https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/javase-jdk8-downloads.html

Download and Install x64/x86 w.r.t. your PC’s specification.
After installing, navigate to \bin of JDK, in my case:

C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_301\bin

Copy the path, open “Edit environment variables for your account”.
Create a new variable JAVA_HOME .

JAVA_HOME Environment Variable

You’re done setting up the JDK. 🥳

Andriod Studio:

We’re downloading andriod studio to set up the andriod emulator.

Download Andriod Studio from ANDRIOD STUDIO.
Install it.
Now, open your CMD/Terminal, and run the command:

flutter doctor

See if flutter doctor recognized android studio

You might not get Green Ticks on everything, check only andriod studio as of now.

If Flutter cannot locate it, run flutter config --android-studio-dir <directory> to set the directory that Android Studio is installed to.
Open Andriod Studio

If you wish to develop flutter apps in Andriod Studio itself,
- Go to plugins, search for “Dart” and “Flutter”.
- Download them, and restart andriod studio. Now you’ll be able to see a “Create New Flutter Project” on the dashboard.