Flutter Buttons & Gestures Guide: Make Your App Interactive (2025)

Make It Clickable

A static app is just a poster. To make a real application, you need to handle user interaction.

In Flutter, you have two choices: use a pre-built Button Widget or wrap your own custom widget in a Gesture Detector. We will cover both.

🔘 1. The Big 3 Buttons

Flutter replaced the old "RaisedButton" years ago. Here are the modern standards you must use in 2025.

Column(
  children: [
    // 1. Filled Button (Primary Action)
    ElevatedButton(
      onPressed: () {
        print("I am pressed!");
      },
      child: Text("Submit"),
    ),

    // 2. Text Only (Secondary Action)
    TextButton(
      onPressed: () {},
      child: Text("Cancel"),
    ),

    // 3. Border Only
    OutlinedButton(
      onPressed: () {},
      child: Text("Details"),
    ),
  ],
)
        

👆 2. Making Anything Clickable

What if you want to click an Image, an Icon, or a fancy Container? You can't use ElevatedButton for that.

You need the InkWell or GestureDetector.

💡 Pro Tip: InkWell vs GestureDetector
Use InkWell if you want that cool "Ripple Effect" (splash) when touched. Use GestureDetector if you need advanced swipes or taps without visual feedback.

// Using InkWell for the Ripple Effect
InkWell(
  onTap: () {
    print("Container Tapped!");
  },
  child: Container(
    padding: EdgeInsets.all(20),
    color: Colors.blue.withOpacity(0.2),
    child: Text("Tap Me for Ripple!"),
  ),
)
        

🚫 3. How to Disable a Button

Beginners often write complex logic to change the button color to grey. You don't need to do that!

Just set onPressed to null. Flutter automatically disables the button and greys it out.

ElevatedButton(
  // If isLoading is true, button is disabled
  onPressed: isLoading ? null : () {
     saveData();
  },
  child: Text("Save"),
)
        

Conclusion

Start with ElevatedButton for main actions. Use InkWell when you want to make custom UI elements interactive.

Now that you can click buttons, what happens next? Learn to navigate to a new screen in our Full Flutter Navigation Course.