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flutter attach fails to attach to macos app #183248
Description
- Create an app that runs on all platforms:
flutter create some_app - Run
flutter attachfrom thesome_app/directory - In another terminal, run
flutter run -d macosfrom thesome_app/directory - Observe, the
flutter attachcommand times out waiting for the VM service connection
If you happen to have a simulator open, and then repeat steps 2 & 3, flutter attach assumes it is waiting for a connection on the iOS simulator even though the app I'm trying to connect to was ran on the macos target.
Flutter 3.41.0-1.0.pre-861 • channel [user-branch] • unknown source
Framework • revision d3dd7744e8 (3 hours ago) • 2026-03-04 11:32:22 -0600
Engine • hash f6413c9a1d1e846b1efca8e6918b7144f74cbec7 (revision eb0b756f6e) (7 hours ago) • 2026-03-04
12:29:36.000Z
Tools • Dart 3.12.0 (build 3.12.0-201.0.dev) • DevTools 2.55.0
Activity
vashworth commentedon Mar 4, 2026
That's likely because the Flutter tool will automatically select an open simulator instead of
macos, if the device is not specified in the command. Andflutter attachdoesn't have a way of knowing if that's the correct device so it'll attempt to connect and fail/wait forever: #130623jmagman commentedon Mar 4, 2026
Does
flutter attach -d macoswork?kenzieschmoll commentedon Mar 5, 2026
No it does not:
saurabh-mirajkar commentedon Mar 9, 2026
@vashworth thanks for the report. Labelling this for further investigation.
loic-sharma commentedon Mar 11, 2026
cc @knopp to see if you can reproduce.