Installing Android Studio on Windows for Flutter

In this article, we will download and install Android Studio on Windows. Then we will configure the Android Studio Flutter plugins.

Install Android Studio on Windows

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 on Windows to build Flutter apps for Android devices and browsers.

Although we can build a cross-platform Flutter app on Windows, we would need a Mac to compile it for iOS and MacOS target devices.

To install Android Studio, we need to download the Android Studio installation program. Once downloaded, we will launch the installer and follow the steps.

Windows Installer for Android Studio

Once finished, the Setup program will close, and Android Studio will open. It will launch a wizard to set up our development environment and download any necessary components.

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Install Android Studio Command Line Tools

Next, we need to install the Android SDK Command Line Tools. To do this, we:

Launch Android Studio
Go to More Actions and choose SDK Manager

Opening the SDK Manager

In the SDK Manager under System Setup, click the checkbox for Android SDK Command-line Tools (latest)

Selecting Command Line Tools

Install Android Studio Plugin

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.

Launch Android Studio and select the Plugins item in the navigation list on the left side.

Select Plugins for Android Studio Windows

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

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

New Flutter Project Option in Android Studio

Review

We should now have Android Studio set up! Let’s review what we learned about installing Android Studio on a Windows computer:

We should install the Flutter SDK first.
Android Studio can build Flutter apps for Android and web browsers.
Our same Flutter app can be moved to a Mac later and be used to build the App for iOS and MacOS devices.
We also need to install the Command Line tools and Flutter plugin, then restart our IDE.

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