Installing Android Studio on MacOS for Flutter

Install Android Studio

Note: Before installing Android Studio, we should have installed the Flutter SDK.

Android Studio is a free IDE created by Google. We can use Android Studio to build Flutter apps which will run on many types of devices.

To install Android Studio, we need to do the following:

• Navigate to the Android Studio homepage and click on the Download Android Studio button.

• Navigate to the downloads folder and double-click on the downloaded file.

• Once the installer opens, drag and drop the Android Studio icon into the Applications folder. Doing this will copy Android Studio into the Applications folder on the Mac.

We can now launch Android Studio from the Applications folder! Let’s do that so Android Studio can download updates or necessary files.

Install the Flutter Plug-in

When we launch Android Studio, we will see an option to install plugins to extend Android Studio. We need to install the plugins to allow for Flutter development.

On the left side, we select Plugins.

Next, we enter flutter as a search term in the Marketplace, then install the Flutter plugin. Note that this will also install the Dart plugin as it is required.

Once the plug-in has finished installing, Android Studio will restart, and we will now see an option to create a Flutter app!

Review

Congratulations! We are almost done with this lesson, but before we finish, let’s review what we learned about installing Android Studio on a Mac:

• We should install the Flutter SDK first.

• Android Studio can build Flutter apps for many devices, not just Android.

• We also need to install the Flutter plug-in and restart our IDE.