Flutter & Dart — VS Code Setup

A clean, productivity-focused VS Code configuration for Flutter and Dart development. Drop these files into your project and get formatting, auto-imports, const fixes, and more — all on save.

📖 For a full walkthrough of each setting, check out the companion article: A Clean & Productive VS Code Setup for Flutter & Dart Developers

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What's included

File	Purpose
.vscode/settings.json	Editor formatting, save actions, Dart/Flutter quality-of-life settings
analysis_options.yaml	Lint rules that power auto-const fixes on save

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Quick start

1. Copy .vscode/settings.json into your project's .vscode/ folder.
2. Copy analysis_options.yaml into your project root.
3. Make sure flutter_lints is in your pubspec.yaml:

dev_dependencies:
  flutter_lints: ^5.0.0

4. Run flutter pub get, then open any Dart file and hit Cmd+S (or Ctrl+S).

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What happens on save

• Code is formatted using dart format
• Imports are sorted and unused ones are removed
• Missing imports are added automatically
• const keywords are added wherever possible
• Trailing whitespace is trimmed

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settings.json — highlights

Formatting

"editor.formatOnSave": true,
"editor.formatOnType": true,
"editor.formatOnPaste": true

Keeps code clean without any manual effort.

Save actions

"editor.codeActionsOnSave": {
  "source.organizeImports": "always",
  "source.addMissingImports": "always",
  "source.fixAll": "always"
}

source.fixAll: "always" is the key setting — it applies all auto-fixable lint warnings on save, including adding const. This only works if the corresponding lint rules are active in analysis_options.yaml.

File cleanliness

"files.trimTrailingWhitespace": true,
"files.insertFinalNewline": true,
"files.trimFinalNewlines": true

No more trailing spaces or inconsistent file endings in your diffs.

Hot reload on save

"dart.hotReloadOnSave": "all"

Triggers Flutter hot reload automatically whenever you save a file.

Editor readability

"editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled": true,
"editor.guides.bracketPairs": true,
"editor.stickyScroll.enabled": true

Makes deeply nested widget trees much easier to navigate.

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analysis_options.yaml — const rules

These four rules are what make auto-const work on save:

Rule	What it does
prefer_const_constructors	Adds const to constructors that can be constant
prefer_const_literals_to_create_immutables	Makes [] → const [] inside immutable widgets
prefer_const_declarations	Changes final x = 5 → const x = 5 where possible
prefer_const_constructors_in_immutables	Enforces const constructors on StatelessWidget subclasses

Without these rules active, source.fixAll has nothing to fix — so both files are needed together.

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Requirements

• Dart-Code extension
• Flutter extension
• Flutter SDK
• flutter_lints in dev_dependencies