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Quick Start

Welcome to Shorebird! 👋

In this guide, we’ll walk you through setting up Shorebird and integrating it into your app in just a few minutes.

The first thing you’ll need to do is sign up for a Shorebird account. It’s free to do and you can signup in a manner of seconds.

To create an account, head over to our Web Console and authenticate with one of the available authentication methods.

While a full install may not be required to access and use all of our product offerings, we recommend installing everything locally to make debugging easier as you continue using our services.

To install the Shorebird command line interface (CLI):

Open a terminal and run:

Terminal window
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shorebirdtech/install/main/install.sh -sSf | bash

This installs shorebird into ~/.shorebird/bin and adds it to your PATH. It also installs a copy of Flutter and Dart inside ~/.shorebird/bin/cache/flutter. The copy of Flutter is slightly modified to add Shorebird code push and is not intended to be added to your PATH. You can continue to use the versions of Flutter and Dart you already have installed.

Shorebird can also be manually installed, allowing users to choose where the installation will be placed.

In order to do so, in a terminal, inside the folder where Shorebird should be installed at, run:

Terminal window
git clone -b stable https://github.com/shorebirdtech/shorebird.git

Add the bin folder from the repository you just cloned into your PATH.

Once the installation has completed, shorebird should be available in your terminal:

$ shorebird
The shorebird command-line tool
Usage: shorebird <command> [arguments]
Global options:
-h, --help Print this usage information.
--version Print the current version.
-v, --[no-]verbose Noisy logging, including all shell commands executed.
Available commands:
cache Manage the Shorebird cache.
doctor Show information about the installed tooling.
flutter Manage your Shorebird Flutter installation.
init Initialize Shorebird.
login Login as a new Shorebird user.
login:ci Login as a CI user.
logout Logout of the current Shorebird user
patch Creates a shorebird patch for the provided target platforms
patches Manage Shorebird patches
preview Preview a specific release on a device.
release Creates a shorebird release for the provided target platforms
releases Manage Shorebird releases
upgrade Upgrade your copy of Shorebird.
Run "shorebird help <command>" for more information about a command.

You can use the shorebird doctor to ensure things are setup correctly:

Terminal window
shorebird doctor

Example output:

$ shorebird doctor
Shorebird 1.5.1 • git@github.com:shorebirdtech/shorebird.git
Flutter 3.27.0 • revision 1e0e5760eeaf534c280cf59ee0504d0e2ba12a7b
Engine • revision 59571a1190752bc1740bff652ce5f0ba7c9413f8
URL Reachability
✓ https://api.shorebird.dev OK (0.1s)
✓ https://console.shorebird.dev OK (0.1s)
✓ https://oauth2.googleapis.com OK (60ms)
✓ https://storage.googleapis.com OK (0.2s)
✓ https://cdn.shorebird.cloud OK (0.1s)
✓ Shorebird is up-to-date (1.4s)
✓ Flutter install is correct (0.4s)
No issues detected!

Finally, you can log in to your Shorebird account on your machine:

Terminal window
shorebird login

Your now ready to add Shorebird to your app.

You can start by creating a new Flutter app or navigating to the directory of your already created Flutter app.

Terminal window
flutter create my_shorebird_app
cd my_shorebird_app

To enable this app for Shorebird just run:

Terminal window
shorebird init

This will create a shorebird.yaml file in the root of your project. This file contains your Shorebird app_id. Your app_id is not secret and can be checked into source control and freely shared.

This will also run shorebird doctor to ensure everything is set up correctly.

Now that your account is set up and your app is initialized, you’re all set to begin. Check out the detailed sections here in our docs to learn more about each product and how to get the most out of them.