Fade in images with a placeholder

When displaying images using the default Image widget, you might notice they simply pop onto the screen as they’re loaded. This might feel visually jarring to your users.

Instead, wouldn’t it be nice if you could display a placeholder at first, and images would fade in as they’re loaded? We can use the FadeInImage Widget packaged with Flutter for exactly this purpose!

FadeInImage works with images of any type: in-memory, local assets, or images from the internet.

In this example, we’ll use the transparent_image package for a simple transparent placeholder. You can also consider using local assets for placeholders by following the Assets and Images guide.

new FadeInImage.memoryNetwork(
  placeholder: kTransparentImage,
  image: 'https://github.com/flutter/website/blob/master/_includes/code/layout/lakes/images/lake.jpg?raw=true',
);

Complete Example

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

void main() {
  runApp(new MyApp());
}

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    final title = 'Fade in images';

    return new MaterialApp(
      title: title,
      home: new Scaffold(
        appBar: new AppBar(
          title: new Text(title),
        ),
        body: new Stack(
          children: <Widget>[
            new Center(child: new CircularProgressIndicator()),
            new Center(
              child: new FadeInImage.memoryNetwork(
                placeholder: kTransparentImage,
                image:
                    'https://github.com/flutter/website/blob/master/_includes/code/layout/lakes/images/lake.jpg?raw=true',
              ),
            ),
          ],
        ),
      ),
    );
  }
}

Fading In Image Demo