Popover

pub CI coverage License: MIT

The example app with open popovers on macOS, iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows, Linux and the web

A Flutter popover in the style of iOS: a box with an arrow pointing at the widget that opened it. showPopover pushes a route on the root navigator, measures the widget behind the context you pass, and places the body above, below or beside it. It runs on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux and the web, and depends only on package:flutter/widgets.dart.

Install

flutter pub add popover

Dart 3.13 and Flutter 3.47 or newer.

Quick start

Call showPopover with the context of the widget the arrow should point at:

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:popover/popover.dart';

class MenuButton extends StatelessWidget {
  const MenuButton({super.key});

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return TextButton(
      onPressed: () async {
        final choice = await showPopover<String>(
          context: context,
          width: 160,
          height: 112,
          bodyBuilder: (context) => Material(
            type: MaterialType.transparency,
            child: Column(
              children: [
                for (final item in ['Copy', 'Share'])
                  ListTile(
                    title: Text(item),
                    onTap: () => Navigator.pop(context, item),
                  ),
              ],
            ),
          ),
        );
        debugPrint('Picked $choice');
      },
      child: const Text('Menu'),
    );
  }
}

showPopover returns the value passed to Navigator.pop, or null when the user taps outside. example/lib/main.dart places nine buttons across the screen. Run it with cd example && flutter run.

Popover widget

Popover keeps a popover in the widget tree. Its child is the anchor, and a PopoverController opens and closes it:

class ShareButton extends StatefulWidget {
  const ShareButton({super.key});

  @override
  State<ShareButton> createState() => _ShareButtonState();
}

class _ShareButtonState extends State<ShareButton> {
  final _controller = PopoverController();

  @override
  void dispose() {
    _controller.dispose();
    super.dispose();
  }

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Popover(
      controller: _controller,
      semanticsLabel: 'Share',
      content: (context) => const ShareMenu(),
      child: TextButton(
        onPressed: _controller.toggle,
        child: const Text('Share'),
      ),
    );
  }
}

show, hide and toggle open and close it, and isOpen turns false when the user closes it with a tap outside, Esc or the back gesture. onPop runs whenever it pops. Popover takes the other arguments of showPopover, and they apply when it opens. A new content rebuilds an open popover. When Popover leaves the tree, its popover closes without the closing animation and isOpen stays true, so it opens again when a Popover with the same controller comes back.

Material and Cupertino

Flutter 3.47 moved Material and Cupertino into the material_ui and cupertino_ui packages, whose classes differ from the ones in package:flutter/material.dart and package:flutter/cupertino.dart. Since 0.5.0 popover depends on none of them and works in a MaterialApp or a CupertinoApp from either source.

The body is not wrapped in a Material. InkWell, ListTile, TextField, Checkbox and the other widgets that need one throw No Material widget found unless you wrap the body in the Material of your UI library, as the quick start does. Use MaterialType.transparency, since an opaque Material covers the glass background.

showPopover captures Theme, DefaultTextStyle, IconTheme and the other inherited themes at context and applies them to the body, as showDialog does. The body gets the text and icon style in effect where it was opened: the AppBar foreground color when opened from an AppBar action, and MaterialApp's red debug style when context has no Material ancestor. A Material wrapper resets the text to the theme's bodyMedium. An IconTheme around the body resets the icons.

Cupertino widgets such as CupertinoListTile need no wrapper.

barrierLabel is the screen reader label of the barrier and defaults to 'Dismiss'. For a localized one, pass MaterialLocalizations.of(context).modalBarrierDismissLabel or CupertinoLocalizations.of(context).modalBarrierDismissLabel.

Style and theme

PopoverStyle holds how a popover looks and moves: arrowStyle, backgroundColor, brightness, barrierColor, radius, shadow, arrowWidth, arrowHeight, transition and transitionDuration. Every field is optional, and a field left null falls back to the native default of the platform, described in the sections below. Pass a style per popover with style:, or set one for a whole subtree with PopoverTheme:

PopoverTheme(
  data: const PopoverStyle(radius: 16),
  child: MaterialApp(home: const HomePage()),
);

showPopover(
  context: context,
  style: const PopoverStyle(arrowStyle: PopoverArrowStyle.triangle),
  bodyBuilder: (context) => const Text('Hello'),
);

The style at the call is merged on top of the theme, so its non-null fields win. A null field keeps what is below it, so a field set in the theme cannot be cleared per call: a theme backgroundColor turns the glass off for every popover below it, and a theme brightness turns off the contrast with the text. shadow: const [] removes the shadow. Popovers opened from inside a popover see the same theme.

Arrow style

arrowStyle picks the shape. PopoverArrowStyle.apple draws the native outline. On iOS that is the iOS 26 popover: Apple's continuous corners with a 34 point radius and a 26 by 13 arrow whose tip is rounded and whose sides flow into the body. On macOS it is the macOS 26 NSPopover: 20 point corners and an arrow with an arc for a tip. Next to a corner the arrow merges into it, as on the native platforms. The outlines repeat the mask paths UIKit and AppKit draw, checked against paths dumped from an iOS simulator and from macOS, and the default shadows are measured from both.

PopoverArrowStyle.triangle is the sharp triangle with 8 point corners from earlier versions. PopoverArrowStyle.adaptive, the default, picks apple on iOS, iPadOS and macOS and triangle everywhere else, on the web by the host OS. arrowWidth, arrowHeight, radius and shadow override the defaults of either shape, for example PopoverStyle(radius: 13) for the corners of iOS before version 26.

Background and dark mode

With the apple shape the default background is the Liquid Glass of iOS 26 and macOS 26: the content behind the popover shows through, blurred and tinted, and a light rim runs along the outline. The blur, the tint and the rim are fitted to native popovers captured over 22 backgrounds in light and dark mode, and match them within a few levels of brightness on flat colors. Native glass also bends the light near the outline and adapts to a wide area behind it. The popover does neither, so fine detail such as text behind it blurs more evenly than on iOS. The triangle shape gets white, or Color(0xFF2C2C2E) in dark mode.

Light or dark follows the text color the body inherits from context: dark text gets a light background, light text a dark one. So the body stays readable in an app that forces a light or a dark theme. Without an inherited text color it follows the system setting. brightness overrides both, and backgroundColor replaces the glass with a solid color. A Material around the body resets its text to the theme's bodyMedium, so pass brightness when you open the popover from a place with a different text color, such as an AppBar with a colored background.

iOS and macOS do not dim the screen behind a popover, so the barrier is transparent with the apple shape and dims to Color(0x80000000) with the triangle.

Placement

The popover is placed the way UIPopoverPresentationController and NSPopover place theirs. The rules were measured on iOS 26 simulators and macOS 26.

direction is the preferred side: PopoverDirection.bottom by default, or top, left or right. Left and right stay physical in right-to-left apps. When the popover does not fit there, it opens on the opposite side. On macOS it then tries the two perpendicular sides, like NSPopover. When it fits nowhere, it takes the preferred or the opposite side, whichever has more room, and the body shrinks to fit, so a scrollable body scrolls.

The popover stays inside the safe area and above the keyboard, with Apple's margins: 10 on iPhone, 19 at the sides, 30 at the top and 10 at the bottom on iPad, 13 on macOS. Android, Windows, Linux and the web use the iPhone margin. Flutter web picks the rules of the host OS, so it gets the macOS rules on a Mac.

Along the side it opens on, the body centers on the anchor and slides to stay on screen. Outside macOS, a popover on the left or the right may cover the anchor up to its center, as UIKit does. An anchor that is partly or fully off screen is moved onto the screen edge first. The popover follows the anchor when it moves, scrolls or the screen rotates.

width, height and constraints size the body and are capped by the room available. arrowDxOffset and arrowDyOffset move the point the arrow aims at. contentDxOffset and contentDyOffset widen and heighten the anchor, which moves a popover that opens to the right or below.

Dismissing

A tap on the barrier closes the popover. barrierDismissible: false keeps it open, and the style's barrierColor replaces the default tint. With allowClicksOnBackground: true, taps pass through the barrier to the widgets behind it and barrierDismissible is ignored. onPop runs whenever the route pops.

requestFocus: false stops the popover from taking focus, so an open keyboard stays up.

Keyboard and accessibility

Esc closes the popover on every platform, as it closes an NSPopover, unless barrierDismissible is false or allowClicksOnBackground is true. While the popover is open, Tab moves through its body only, and when it closes, focus goes back to the widget that had it. requestFocus: false leaves focus where it is.

Screen readers see the popover, not the screen behind it. On iOS, Android and macOS they also reach the barrier last, labeled with barrierLabel, which closes the popover with a tap or the dismiss gesture. Flutter leaves the barrier out of the semantics tree on Windows and Linux. semanticsLabel names the popover, and VoiceOver and TalkBack announce the name when it opens, as they announce the title of a dialog:

showPopover(
  context: context,
  semanticsLabel: 'Share',
  bodyBuilder: (context) => const ShareMenu(),
);

Animation

The popover fades in over the style's transitionDuration, 200 ms by default. PopoverTransition.scale, the default transition, also grows the body from the arrow. With the apple shape on iOS it moves like an iOS 26 popover instead: it scales up from the arrow tip while its outline grows from 100 points to its full height, on the spring UIKit uses, and closes on UIKit's softer closing spring. The springs are read from the animations UIKit attaches to a popover, so opening takes 494 ms and closing 516 ms. A transitionDuration you pass applies to both. While closing, iOS also squashes the glass vertically for the first few frames, which the popover does not.

On macOS it moves like NSPopover: it scales up from the arrow tip and fades in on a spring over 440 ms, and shrinks back into the tip over 200 ms. These springs are fitted to NSPopover recorded at 120 frames per second. PopoverTransition.other turns the scaling off. popoverTransitionBuilder replaces the fade. Avoid Opacity and FadeTransition in it with the glass background: Impeller gives a backdrop filter inside an opacity layer nothing to blur, so the glass shows as a flat tint until the fade ends.

showPopover(
  context: context,
  bodyBuilder: (context) => const Text('Hello'),
  popoverTransitionBuilder: (animation, child) =>
      SlideTransition(
        position: Tween(begin: const Offset(0, -0.1), end: Offset.zero)
            .animate(animation),
        child: child,
      ),
);

Using with AI agents

The package ships a skill that teaches coding agents how to use it: which API to pick, the anchor context, the Material wrapper, the native defaults and the pitfalls. Install it into your app with the skills tool:

dart run skills@ get --package popover

It lands in .agents/skills/, or in .claude/skills/ with --agent claude. For the analyzer, pub.dev search and hot reload, add the Dart and Flutter MCP server, which comes with the Dart SDK:

claude mcp add dart -- dart mcp-server

Migrating from 0.4

0.5.0 changes how the popover looks and behaves on iOS, iPadOS and macOS, and how its body is built everywhere.

  • The body is no longer wrapped in a Material. Wrap it in Material(type: MaterialType.transparency) when it holds InkWell, ListTile, TextField or other widgets that need one.
  • The body inherits Theme, DefaultTextStyle and IconTheme from context. A Material around it resets the text style.
  • barrierLabel defaults to 'Dismiss'. Pass a localized label if you need one.
  • The popover is placed like a native one: it flips, slides and shrinks to stay inside the safe area, and width, height and constraints are capped by the room available.
  • On Apple platforms the defaults are native: the apple outline, Liquid Glass, no dimming behind the popover and the native springs. Dark mode follows the text color the body inherits.
  • The look moved into PopoverStyle: transition, backgroundColor, barrierColor, transitionDuration, radius, shadow, arrowWidth and arrowHeight go into style: instead of showPopover. PopoverTheme sets them for a whole subtree.
  • key and the deprecated isParentAlive are gone from showPopover.

Before and after:

// 0.4
showPopover(
  context: context,
  radius: 12,
  arrowHeight: 15,
  backgroundColor: Colors.white,
  bodyBuilder: (context) => const MyBody(),
);

// 0.5
showPopover(
  context: context,
  style: const PopoverStyle(
    radius: 12,
    arrowHeight: 15,
    backgroundColor: Colors.white,
  ),
  bodyBuilder: (context) => const MyBody(),
);

To keep the look of 0.4 everywhere, set it once at the root:

PopoverTheme(
  data: const PopoverStyle(
    arrowStyle: PopoverArrowStyle.triangle,
    backgroundColor: Color(0xFFFFFFFF),
  ),
  child: MaterialApp(home: const HomePage()),
);

and wrap bodies in a Material where they need one.

With the triangle style the barrier still dims to Color(0x80000000) and the popover still fades and scales in over 200 ms.

Contributing

The project accepts pull requests, not issues. Open a PR with a fix or a reproduction in the example app. CONTRIBUTING.md covers tests, the mutation test gate and versioning.

License

MIT. See the LICENSE file.

Libraries

popover