Any real-world drawbacks of disabling Impeller on Android?

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1

Hey everyone,

I’ve been testing my Flutter app on several low-end Android devices, and I’ve noticed that Impeller consistently causes performance issues — things like frame drops, visible UI jank, and occasional GPU-related warnings. After disabling Impeller and switching back to Skia, the performance on these weaker devices improves noticeably.

Before I proceed with this setup for production, I wanted to ask the community:

  • Does disabling the Impeller negatively affect performance on mid-range or high-end Android devices?
  • Have you run into any issues with animations, rendering quality, or visual consistency after switching back to Skia?
  • Are there any known concerns when publishing to Google Play with Impeller disabled?
  • And most importantly, what has your real-world experience been like?

I’d really appreciate any insights from developers who have shipped apps or done extensive testing with Impeller turned off.

Thanks! :raising_hands:

2

Due to some state restoration crashes, I had disabled Impeller in my builds a while ago. But recently there’ve been build warnings about this option being deprecated.

I/flutter ( 3780): [IMPORTANT:flutter/shell/common/shell.cc(527)] [Action Required]: Impeller opt-out deprecated.
I/flutter ( 3780):     The application opted out of Impeller by either using the
I/flutter ( 3780):     `--no-enable-impeller` flag or the
I/flutter ( 3780):     `io.flutter.embedding.android.EnableImpeller` `AndroidManifest.xml` entry.
I/flutter ( 3780):     These options are going to go away in an upcoming Flutter release. Remove
I/flutter ( 3780):     the explicit opt-out. If you need to opt-out, please report a bug describing
I/flutter ( 3780):     the issue.
I/flutter ( 3780): 
I/flutter ( 3780):     https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/new?template=02_bug.yml
3

Which Flutter version did you used?

4

I noticed this warning in Flutter 3.38.3.