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Nowa 3.13: Your whole project in one Library

Nowa 3.13 gives everything in your project one home: the new Library. 📚 Find any screen, component or widget in a few keystrokes and add it to your board without reaching for the mouse. This release also brings a desktop app for Linux, quicker ways to move around your project, and your theme extension colors right in the color picker.

📋 Check all the details of this release in the changelog.

New in This Version ✨​

  • 📚 The Library: Your Whole Project in One Place The Library replaces the Widgets panel. Your screens, components, models and global states, Nowa's built-in widgets, the widgets in your packages and your assets now live in one searchable list.

    • Add anything fast: press Ctrl/Cmd + K (or click the Widget tool), type what you need and press Enter to drop it on your board.
    • Go anywhere: press Ctrl/Cmd + O, type a name and press Enter to open it.
    • Find your way around: filter by kind, choose which of your project, packages, built-in widgets and assets to show, and jump straight to the code with Show in code.

    Files now lives in code mode only, where you can move through your project with the keyboard and drag several files into a folder at once. Learn more in Find and add things with the Library.

  • ↔️ Back, Forward and All Your Boards Two new arrows in the top bar take you back and forward through the screens and files you've opened, just like in a browser (Ctrl + - and Ctrl + Shift + -, with Control on macOS too). The board chip now lists every board in your project: press Ctrl/Cmd + B, type a name and press Enter, or create a new board right from the list.

  • 🐧 Nowa for Linux Nowa now has a desktop app for Linux. Choose Linux when you download Nowa to get a 64-bit archive with an install script that adds Nowa to your app menu. On Linux, you download updates from the update dialog, and your app's preview opens in your browser. See Install the desktop app.

  • 🎨 Your Theme Extensions in the Pickers If your theme uses theme extensions, the color picker now shows a tab for each one next to Material, and the text style picker lists their styles in their own groups. Pick a color and Nowa links it to your extension for you. See Edit theme extensions.

  • 🧩 Widget Variants from @Preview Add Flutter's @Preview to a function or constructor that builds your widget, and Nowa shows it as a named variant: next to the component when you open it, as a choice in the widget picker, and under the widget in the Library. See Preview a widget in several states.

  • 📦 More of Your Code and Packages Just Work

    • Packages: git: and path: dependencies now load in local projects, sdk: dependencies like flutter_localizations count as installed, and gap, flutter_animate, google_fonts and smooth_page_indicator now work on the board.
    • Your own Flutter code: much more hand-written code renders on the board, including switch patterns like > 5, named arguments passed to super(...), and part files, which now stay intact when Nowa saves. Screens from open-source apps like Flutter's compass_app and Wonderous render too.
    • Smarter placeholders: a package widget Nowa can't draw is now a small box, and one that wraps another widget shows what it wraps.
    • Page indicators: nowa_runtime no longer includes smooth_page_indicator. If your project uses page dots, Nowa offers to add the package to your pubspec in one click (Migrate).

  • 💻 Local Projects Stay in Sync Changes you make in another editor right after Nowa saves are no longer missed, and new dependencies you add to pubspec.yaml outside Nowa load on their own.

  • ✨ Smaller Touches

    • A fresh look: new buttons, lists and menus throughout, and the Albert Sans font is back.
    • Design-tool words: Bring forward, Send backward, Bring to front and Send to back replace the old move entries. Ctrl/Cmd + Alt/Option + ] or [ moves a widget all the way to the front or back.
    • Default in dropdowns: the dropdown of a property that can be left empty now starts with Default, which keeps the widget's own default.
    • Branch search: find a Git branch by typing in the branch menu.
    • Tidier boards: each screen stays inside its frame, and snap guides line up at any zoom.
    • Quieter Git history: opening a project in a newer Nowa no longer changes .nowa/settings.json.

➡️ Tell us how the Library feels! Click the ? icon to chat with us directly, or email us at team@nowa.dev. Happy building!