How can I check if the device is a touch device or a mouse device?
Using kIsWeb is not sufficient because if using web version of the app on a mobile device kIsWeb returns true, but I need it to return false because it is a touch device.
Checking the platform doesn't work either because if using web version of the app on an iOS device for example returns false for iOS platform check.
Use case - I have two different types of video players for my app. One is suitable for touch devices (you tap to show and hide controls) and one is suitable for mouse devices (controls show when you mouse into the player and hide when you mouse out).
Youtube has the same idea. If I use the youtube app or website on my iPhone I get touch controls. If I use the youtube app or website on my iPad Pro I get touch controls. If I use the youtube website on my Mac I get mouse controls at all screen sizes (even mobile screen sizes).
So I guess I really just need to know platform on the web. I can get platform if not on the web.
Great question @jwasher! I had the same issue - a touch and swipe based UI that was great as a native mobile app, great as an single page web app (SPA) on mobile web browsers, but that was weird and clunky for mouse based interactions when the SPA was used in a desktop web browser.
The solution I have settled on is to wrap sensitive widgets in a MouseRegion (https://api.flutter.dev/flutter/widgets/MouseRegion-class.html) to detect mouse activity at runtime, then reacting by augmenting the UI with buttons to provide a mouse focussed way of triggering actions previously only linked to touch triggers.
You could use this to "mouse-enable" individual widgets, or you could wrap the whole app in a MouseRegion, trip a state field when activity was detected then rebuild the widget tree in a substantially different way for point and click users.
This strategy may incur some minor complexity/CPU overhead on devices that will never have a mouse attached (like a smartphone), but the solution will be more flexible than a build or configuration time capability determination. If a user starts the app on a tablet, then puts it in a stand and attaches a bluetooth mouse - it will react appropriately.