Which channel do I use in Flutter SDK?

There was an announcement of Preview 1 at " Announcing Flutter Release Preview 1 – Flutter – Medium"

Download the latest beta release of the Flutter SDK In the document. Get Started: Install on macOS - Flutter

Latest beta release version is 0.5.1. It's updated 2 months ago...

$ flutter upgrade

Flutter 0.5.1 • channel beta • https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git
Framework • revision c7ea3ca377 (9 weeks ago) • 2018-05-29 21:07:33 +0200
Engine • revision 1ed25ca7b7
Tools • Dart 2.0.0-dev.58.0.flutter-f981f09760

Latest master release version is 0.5.8-pre.163.

$ flutter channel master
$ flutter upgrade

Flutter 0.5.8-pre.163 • channel master • https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git
Framework • revision 29410abbe7 (2 days ago) • 2018-07-27 22:10:39 -0700
Engine • revision 72a38a6b13
Tools • Dart 2.0.0-dev.69.3.flutter-937ee2e8ca

Which channel do I use in Flutter SDK?

From the Flutter wiki:

> Flutter has the following channels, in increasing order of stability: > > ## master > > The current tip-of-tree, absolute latest cutting edge build. Usually > functional, though sometimes we accidentally break things. > > ## dev > > The latest fully-tested build. Usually functional, but see Bad Builds > for a list of known "bad" dev builds. We continually try to roll > master to dev. Doing so involves running many more tests than those > that we run during master development, which is why this is not > actually the same to master. > > ## beta > > Every month, we pick the "best" dev build of the previous month or so, > and promote it to beta. These builds have been tested with our > codelabs. > > ## stable > > When we believe we have a particularly good build, we promote it to > the stable channel. We intend to do this more or less every quarter, > but this may vary. We recommend that you use this channel for all > production app releases. We may ship hotfixes to the stable channel > for high-priority bugs, although our intent is to do this rarely.

So, use whichever channel you feel comfortable with, meets your needs and/or has whichever fixes in it you need. Start with stable and go from there.

if you want to use flutter for production app then many developer and even google recommend to use stable . if you are using new feature and all feature that flutter provide that I would recommend master but not for production only for hobby project and improving your flutter skill and testing new thing that flutter provide. and not available in flutter stable.

now to know which branch you are currently using. open terminal and type the following command.

flutter channel

It will show branch with start in front of it. that is you current branch to change the branch you can simply use this command.

flutter channel ChannelName 

use respectively channel name and hit enter and then run the below command

flutter upgrade

it will download all the require file from flutter GitHub and you will be ready to go.

all possible flutter channel are below.

> master > > The current tip-of-tree, absolute latest cutting edge build. Usually > functional, though sometimes we accidentally break things. > > dev > > The latest fully-tested build. Usually functional, but see Bad Builds > for a list of known "bad" dev builds. We continually try to roll > master to dev. Doing so involves running many more tests than those > that we run during master development, which is why this is not > actually the same to master. > > beta > > Every month, we pick the "best" dev build of the previous month or so, > and promote it to beta. These builds have been tested with our > codelabs. > > stable > > When we believe we have a particularly good build, we promote it to > the stable channel. We intend to do this more or less every quarter, > but this may vary. We recommend that you use this channel for all > production app releases. We may ship hotfixes to the stable channel > for high-priority bugs, although our intent is to do this rarely.

Whenever you faced a strange behavior from the widgets and app like render glitch or getting white background you must change your channel to another channel and rebuild the app with that channel. With type this commands in terminal:

1- Current channel:

flutter channel

2- change the channel:

flutter channel CHANNEL_NAME

for example change the channel to master:

flutter channel master

according to Flutter build release channels

stable version is recommended for all production app releases.

flutter --version

With this command you can get more detailed information about your development tools and their version.

• Flutter version
• channel
• git remote
• git head
• Engine
• Dart version

In my case:

> Flutter 1.17.5 • channel stable • https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git > Framework • revision 8af6b2f038 (7 days ago) • 2020-06-30 12:53:55 > -0700 Engine • revision ee76268252 Tools • Dart 2.8.4

Now you can use stable Branch( Flutter version 1.0.0).

The flutter team recommends using the stable branch.

That said, the beta branch should be fine. There is no extra level of testing that we do for stable than for beta, other than the extended stabilization period on the beta branch. So if there is something you want to use that is available on beta but not stable, feel free to consider using the beta.

Using dev is a little less safe; if you use a dev build then we recommend watching the Bad Builds page to see if known ship-blocking bugs get reported for that branch. It is reasonable, however, to pick a dev build, test heavily with that build, and then keep using that build. That's what we're actually doing when picking a dev build to put on the beta branch: the only additional testing that we actually do to beta builds over dev builds is checking for basic things like "do our codelabs still work with this build"; beyond that, we just monitor bug reports. Most of our testing is done as pre-commit tests and tests run as part of releasing a dev build, so by the time we release a dev build, we have relatively high confidence that there isn't a serious problem.

UPDATE (Flutter 2.8)

There are three Flutter channels:

• stable

> The stable channel represents the highest-quality builds we have. They’re released quarterly (roughly), and are hotfixed for critical issues in between. This is the “slow” channel: safe, mature, long-term servicing.

• beta

> The beta channel provides a fast-moving alternative to stable for those who are comfortable with a faster cadence. Currently released monthly, stabilized prior to release. This is the “fast” channel. If we find that the dev channel was serving needs that the beta channel cannot currently serve, we may change how we think of the beta channel to address those needs as well (for example, accelerating the release cadence for beta or reducing the level of testing and hot fixing that we perform on beta).

• master

> The master channel is our active development channel. We provide no support on this channel, but we run a comprehensive suite of unit tests against it. This is the right channel for contributors or advanced users who are comfortable with unstable builds. On this channel, we run fast and break things (and then fix them pretty fast, too)

To check the channel you're using, run

flutter channel

To change the channel (to beta for example), run:

flutter channel beta
flutter upgrade