TIL: Swiping PageView on desktop doesn't work

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1

So, this is probably obvious to everyone except me, but if you have a PageView on desktop, it won’t react to drag gestures. So, you can still change pages programmatically using the PageController, and the animation will be there, but the user cant drag to a side to change the page.

To be clear, I think this makes perfect sense. You don’t want these kinds of mobile-first gestures in a desktop app — at least not by default.

The reason I’m mentioning it is that it led me on a wild goose chase yesterday when I tried to find out why the hell my PageView didn’t work. You see, when developing mobile apps, at least in the early stages, I just run them as a desktop (macOS) app. That way, the app is just a window on my screen, I can resize it super easily, and everything is blazing fast.

And since I resize the window to a “mobile like” portrait mode, it’s easy for me to forget that I’m not looking at a mobile app, but a desktop app. Hence, my confusion why PageView didn’t work.

Anyway, maybe this will save someone an hour or so of furious debugging.

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2

I think that should be default (I mean: swipe with the mouse). For the same reason, I’m very frustrated with iPhone Mirroring for development, because, unlike the simulator, I can’t scroll with the mouse pointer (but I can activate “go back” with the mouse, swiping from the left edge, go figure…).

Another thing I’ve noticed is that people seem to forget about mouse and only make things working on touchpads… question: the PageView scrolls with two fingers in the touchpad?

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In my app it does.

4

Yes, two fingers on touchpad work! That gesture did not even occur to me. Thanks! That makes testing so much easier.

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5

it’s easy for me to forget that I’m not looking at a mobile app, but a desktop app

This happened to me too :slight_smile:
But I almost always use scrollBehavior on desktop:

MaterialApp(
    scrollBehavior: const MaterialScrollBehavior().copyWith(
    // enable mouse dragging on desktop
    dragDevices: PointerDeviceKind.values.toSet(),
    ...
6 Likes
6

Whoa, I did not know about this! Fantastic!