flutter / flutter/devtools

[Feature Request] Make "Navigate to source code" optional

Open
#5,063 0 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub
enhancement P3 screen: inspector
Dominant language
Dart
Stars
1.7k
Forks
404
Avg merge
6d 17h
Merged PRs (30d)
18

Description

It can be very annoying when you select a widget in the inspector while also e.g. double-checking some code in your editor and always getting thrown to the source of the widget you selected or worse a miss-click happens, and you end up in a whole other file in another directory tree.

Another case: Emulator/Screen Capture/Browser is above the editor and as soon as a widget is selected the editor is forced into the foreground, hiding the application.

It would be nice to make this behavior optional.

### Current behavior:
DevTools (nearly) always focuses the editor and scrolls to the source for the widget that was selected.
Sometimes it fails to focus somehow, but that seems more like a bug than a defined behavior.

### Desired behavior:
Make this optional, for example, through a small toggle in the DevTools.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by tracing the DevTools behavior that focuses the editor and navigates to a selected widget's source. Confirm where a user-facing toggle could control that behavior, then verify that enabling and disabling it matches the requested optional navigation without changing the existing default unexpectedly.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
dart, flutter
Domain
devtools
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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