Published August 5, 2026

Firebase SDK for Flutter v4.18.0 Delivers Firestore Fixes and AI Logic Updates

The Firebase team has released version 4.18.0 of the Firebase SDK for Flutter, arriving on August 3, 2026 with changes across several products and a welcome absence of breaking changes. The release updates the Flutter BoM to 4.18.0 and bumps the underlying native SDKs to Android 34.17.0, Apple 12.17.0, and JavaScript 12.17.0, ensuring Flutter apps remain aligned with the latest Firebase platform capabilities. For teams that track the FlutterFire release train closely, this is a routine but meaningful update that improves reliability across Firestore, messaging, and AI-powered features.

Cloud Firestore Leads the Changelog

Cloud Firestore receives the largest set of changes in this release. The cloud_firestore plugin advances to version 6.8.0 with a per-engine BinaryMessenger implementation, improved Firestore and Auth link ordering, and profile build support. Windows developers benefit from fixes that prevent lost transaction responses and eliminate platform-thread warnings, while Android transaction listeners are now cleaned up properly on completion. Data fidelity also improves: implicit DateTime values now preserve microseconds during serialization, and new string manipulation functions have been added for Android and iOS, giving developers more expressive query and transformation options.

  • cloud_firestore 6.8.0: Per-engine BinaryMessenger, profile builds, and Windows transaction fixes
  • firebase_ai 3.15.0: The vertexAI reference has been renamed to agentPlatform
  • firebase_messaging 16.5.0: Android ANR fix, macOS hang fix, and UIScene delegate support

AI Logic and Messaging Updates

Firebase AI Logic users should note that the firebase_ai plugin now renames the vertexAI property to agentPlatform, reflecting the ongoing rebranding of Vertex AI to the Agent Platform. This is a source-level change that may require a small rename in code that explicitly references the old property. Meanwhile, firebase_messaging 16.5.0 fixes an issue that could cause ANRs when multiple notifications arrive simultaneously on Android, resolves a hang in getInitialMessage on macOS, and adds early notification delegate setup for UIScene-based iOS apps.

Authentication also sees a targeted fix: generic OAuth credentials on iOS previously passed a missing access token through a non-nullable Firebase SDK selector, and this release corrects that path. Firebase Core advances to 4.13.0 with native SDK bumps, a WebKit import race fix for web apps that loads firebase-app.js before component bundles, and documentation updates for code snippets that did not compile. Crashlytics now avoids heap-loading libapp.so to retrieve its build ID on Android, and Cloud Storage respects android.builtInKotlin=true while Windows list() and listAll() now throw unimplemented instead of returning misleading empty results.

Upgrading is straightforward for most projects. Update the firebase_core and product plugin versions in pubspec.yaml to the latest releases under the 4.18.0 BoM, then run flutter pub upgrade. Because this release contains no breaking package changes, the upgrade path is smooth for teams that keep their FlutterFire dependencies current. As always, teams using Firebase AI Logic should double-check any references to the renamed vertexAI property as part of their migration.