Updating Your Flutter App on the Stores

Tutorial 5 of 5

1. Introduction

Welcome to this tutorial! Our main goal is to guide you through the process of updating your Flutter app on both Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store. Throughout this tutorial, you'll learn how to make updates to your app, such as fixing bugs, adding new features, and improving the app's overall performance.

Before we start, you should have a basic understanding of Flutter and Dart, and have a Flutter app already deployed on the App Store and/or Play Store.

2. Step-by-Step Guide

To update your app on the stores, you need to follow these steps:
1. Update your app on your local machine.
2. Update the version number.
3. Build a release version of your app.
4. Upload the updated app to the appropriate app store.

Remember to test your app thoroughly before updating it on the stores.

Updating Your App

After identifying the changes to be made, update your app on your local machine. This could be bug fixes, adding new features, or performance enhancements.

Updating the Version Number

In your pubspec.yaml file, you'll find a version line. It will typically look something like this:

version: 1.0.0+1

The number before the plus (+) sign indicates the version of the app, while the number after the plus sign is the build number. When you update your app, you need to update these numbers.

Building a Release Version of Your App

After making changes and updating the version number, you need to create a release build of your app. This is done differently for iOS and Android.

For iOS:

flutter build ios

For Android:

flutter build apk

Uploading the Updated App

After creating the release build, upload it to the respective App Store or Play Store.

For iOS, use Xcode to upload your build, while for Android, use the Google Play Console.

3. Code Examples

Let's take a look at some examples.

Updating the Version Number

In your pubspec.yaml:

version: 1.0.0+1

If you're releasing a major update, you may want to update the version number like so:

version: 2.0.0+2

Building a Release Version

For iOS:

flutter build ios

And for Android:

flutter build apk

4. Summary

In this tutorial, we have covered the process of updating your Flutter app on the App Store and Play Store. We learned how to update your app locally, update the version number, build a release version, and finally, how to upload the updated app to the respective stores.

Next, you might want to learn more about Flutter's development process in depth. The official Flutter documentation is a great resource for this.

5. Practice Exercises

  1. Change the color of a button in your app and update the version number accordingly.
  2. Build a release version of your app and practice uploading it to a store (you don't actually need to submit it).
  3. Add a new feature to your app, such as a new screen or functionality, and go through the entire update process.

Remember to always thoroughly test your app before releasing updates. Happy coding!