How to Open a URL using WebView in Flutter

Sometimes, we may want to open a specific web page inside our mobile app so that users don’t feel they are opening a website. In such situations, a webview inside the app will be extremely useful. In this flutter tutorial, let’s learn how to open a URL using WebView in Flutter.

First of all, Flutter doesn’t have a dedicated inbuilt webview widget. Fortunately, there’s a plugin named webview flutter which is developed by the official flutter development team.

You can install the webview flutter using the following command.

flutter pub add webview_flutter

Make sure that minSdkVersion in android/app/build.gradle is 19 or greater than 19.

android {
    defaultConfig {
        minSdkVersion 19
        ...
    }
}

Also, add internet permission in the Android Manifest file.

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

You can import the package as given below.

import 'package:webview_flutter/webview_flutter.dart';

It has two parts: a WebViewController and a WebViewWidget. You have to initialize the WebViewController first.

late final WebViewController controller;
controller = WebViewController()
      ..setJavaScriptMode(JavaScriptMode.unrestricted)
      ..loadRequest(Uri.parse('https://flutter.dev'));
  }

Then pass the controller to the WebViewWidget as given below.

WebViewWidget(controller: controller)

Following is the complete code to add WebView in Flutter.

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

void main() => runApp(const MyApp());

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

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
        title: 'Flutter Demo',
        theme: ThemeData(
          useMaterial3: true,
        ),
        home: const MyStatefulWidget());
  }
}

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

  @override
  State<MyStatefulWidget> createState() => _MyStatefulWidgetState();
}

class _MyStatefulWidgetState extends State<MyStatefulWidget> {
  late final WebViewController controller;
  @override
  void initState() {
    super.initState();
    controller = WebViewController()
      ..setJavaScriptMode(JavaScriptMode.unrestricted)
      ..loadRequest(Uri.parse('https://flutter.dev'));
  }

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Scaffold(
        appBar: AppBar(
          title: const Text('Flutter WebView Example'),
        ),
        body: WebViewWidget(controller: controller));
  }
}

Following is the output on an Android device.