Flutter Gems
Flutter Gems is a curated list of 7250+ useful Dart & Flutter packages that are categorized based on functionality.
Top Flutter Placeholder packages
Last updated: May 18, 2026
Placeholders and Skeleton Loaders are used to indicate that content is currently fetching from a network. They replace traditional loading spinners by showing the exact shape of the content to come.
Best Practices for Placeholders
- Shimmer Effects: Use a subtle, sweeping shimmer animation across your skeleton loaders. A static grey box looks like a broken UI, while a moving shimmer clearly indicates active loading.
- Match Final Layouts: The skeleton loader should perfectly match the dimensions of the final loaded content. If it doesn't, the UI will jump jarringly when the real data arrives.
- Progressive Loading: For images, use BlurHash or low-quality image placeholders (LQIP) instead of solid colors. This provides a beautiful transition as the high-resolution image finishes downloading.
The complete list of Skeleton Loaders, Shimmer Effects, and Placeholder packages for Flutter is provided below.
shimmer
👍 5.42K ⬇️ 1.3M
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
A package provides an easy way to add shimmer effect in Flutter project
skeletonizer
👍 2.29K ⬇️ 420.8K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Good
Converts already built widgets into skeleton loaders with no extra effort.
flutter_blurhash
👍 1.71K ⬇️ 147K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Average
Compact representation of placeholder for an image. Encode a blurry image under 30 characters for instant display like used by Medium
transparent_image
👍 499 ⬇️ 107.6K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
A transparent image in Dart code, represented as a Uint8List.
redacted
👍 562 ⬇️ 2K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Average
A package that automatically generate a loading widget from your own widget.
shimmer_animation
👍 514 ⬇️ 13.3K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Good
This shimmer animation widget can help you bring simple yet beautiful skeleton loaders to your project with ease.
skeleton_text
👍 350 ⬇️ 31.5K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
A package that provides an easy way to add skeleton text loading animation in Flutter project. This project is a part of 101Loop community.
random_string
👍 202 ⬇️ 116K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
Simple library for generating random ascii strings by default using Random from 'dart:math'.
card_loading
👍 272 ⬇️ 2.7K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
A Flutter package to create easy create loading card between two colors
skeleton_loader
👍 235 ⬇️ 17
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
A Flutter Package which provides a fully customizable loading skeleton for your app,
fade_shimmer
👍 224 ⬇️ 8.5K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Average
A fade shimmer library to implement loading effects like the latest Facebook loading skeleton UI with smooth fade transitions.
fancy_shimmer_image
👍 218 ⬇️ 2.3K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
Package for easy use of images that are automatically cacheable and have a beautiful on the fly (but it can be configured) shimmer effect while loading
flutter_shimmer
👍 206 ⬇️ 748
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
it creating Shimmer effect that indicate a loading status, so instead of using ProgressBar or usual loader use Shimmer for a better design and user interface.
blurhash_dart
👍 134 ⬇️ 56.8K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
A pure dart implementation of the BlurHash algorithm. This package provides both an encoder and a decoder, as well as some utility extensions.
blurhash_ffi
👍 105 ⬇️ 3.8K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Average
A compact, fast and easy to use blurry image placeholder generator for Flutter using native ffi bindings.
flutter_lorem
👍 82 ⬇️ 15.4K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
Generates random sentences and paragraphs (similar to "lorem ipsum" generators).
animated_loading_border
👍 88 ⬇️ 1.6K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
A package that gives us a modern way to show animated border as a placeholder while loading our widget with easy customization and ready to use.
blurhash
👍 79 ⬇️ 2.9K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Average
A very compact representation of a placeholder for an image.
animated_shimmer
👍 67 ⬇️ 194
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
A simple & lightweight widget to display a animated shimmer effect.
flutter_placeholder_textlines
👍 52 ⬇️ 217
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
A simple plugin to generate placeholder lines that emulates text in a UI, useful for displaying placeholder content while loading or empty items
flutter_skeleton_ui
👍 42 ⬇️ 9.2K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
A Flutter package for building custom skeleton widgets to mimic the page's layout while loading.
loader_skeleton
👍 41 ⬇️ 60
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
A Facebook & Twitter Like Card Loading Shimmer Skeleton Library.
better_skeleton
👍 28 ⬇️ 6.3K
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Poor
A flutter package to make better loading times using skeleton.
fast_blurhash
👍 33 ⬇️ 32
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Average
A high-performance Dart FFI package for decoding BlurHash, leveraging Rust for faster processing.
custom_cached_image
👍 31 ⬇️ 146
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Good
A Flutter package for displaying cached network images with a shimmer loading effect.
xtools
👍 27 ⬇️ 20
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Good
A comprehensive collection of Flutter utility widgets and helpers for rapid, beautiful app development. Includes shimmers, buttons, toasts, and more.
image_blur
👍 21 ⬇️ 67
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Good
This Flutter package enables adding shimmer and blur effects to images. Apply these effects in circular and rectangular shapes, for both local and online images.
flutter_faker_plus
👍 8 ⬇️ 30
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Good
Generate random fake data for user profiles, e-commerce products, and geolocations etc.
app_shimmer
👍 5 ⬇️ 106
Dart 3 compatibleMaintenance Status: Good
A customizable Flutter shimmer loading package with pre-built widgets for ListTiles, ListViews, Grids, and custom containers. Easy to use and highly customizable.
skeletons
👍 344 ⬇️ 2.3K
Maintenance Status: Poor
A Flutter package for building custom skeleton widgets to mimic the page's layout while loading.
empty_widget
👍 70 ⬇️ 166
Maintenance Status: Poor
Custom_Empty widget is flutter custom widget which is designed to notify user about some event.
skeleton_animation
👍 33 ⬇️ 70
Maintenance Status: Poor
Display skeleton animations in your app. It works on android, iOS and the web.
flutter_skeleton
👍 33 ⬇️ 10
Maintenance Status: Poor
Flutter skeleton screen for Android and iOS. Support List, Card and Card-List style. Support light and dark theme.
pk_skeleton
👍 20 ⬇️ 14
Maintenance Status: Poor
A Facebook & Twitter Like Card Loading Shimmer Skeleton Library.
lipsum
👍 17 ⬇️ 18
Maintenance Status: Poor
A simple lorem ipsum text generator. Based off of Andres Araujo's lorem-dart plugin.