What rendering engine does Flutter use? Compare Skia and Impeller.

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Flutter renders via one of two engines: Skia — Google's 20-year-old generic 2D library (also powers Chrome and Android). Generates shaders at runtime, which causes the infamous first-frame shader compilation jank . Backends: OpenGL, Metal, Vulkan, Direct3D. Impeller — Flutter team's new engine, purpose-built for Flutter. Key wins: Shaders precompiled at build time — no shader-compilation jank. GPU-first, tessellated paths. Metal on iOS (default), Vulkan on Android, OpenGL fallback. Multithreaded record + render. Rollout status (2026): iOS Impeller default since Flutter 3.10 (May 2023); Android default on Vulkan-capable devices since 3.19, expanded through 3.27+ with broader device coverage; Web (CanvasKit) and Desktop still use Skia. Two senior signals: (1) **name 'shader compilation jank' as the original problem Impeller solves** — that's the engineering motivation; (2) mention that **Impeller's adoption is staggered** (iOS default since 3.10, Android still rolling out, Web/Desktop still Skia). The wrong answer is 'Impeller is just faster' — the *right* answer is 'Impeller precompiles shaders + uses Metal/Vulkan natively, eliminating first-frame jank that Skia's runtime shader compilation caused on iOS especially.'