Flutter Phone State Plugin

A Flutter plugin that makes it easier to make and track phone calls. The core features are:

1. Initiate a phone call in 1 line of code
2. await any in-flight phone call
3. Watch all phone-related events for a single call, or all calls
4. Track duration of calls, errors, and cancellations

Getting Started

Install the plugin:

flutter_phone_state: ^0.5.8

Before you start

Both Android and iOS put restrictions on accessing phone call data. This plugin makes a best-effort attempt to track the complete lifecycle of a phone call, but it's not perfect and has its limitations. Read the Limitations section below for more info.

Initiate a call

It's recommended that you initiate calls from your app when possible. This gives you the best chance at tracking the call.

// note: this plugin will remove all non-numeric characters from the phone number
final phoneCall = FlutterPhoneState.startPhoneCall("480-555-1234"); 

A PhoneCall object is the source of truth for the call

showCallInfo(PhoneCall phoneCall) {
    print(phoneCall.status); // ringing, dialing, cancelled, error, connecting, connected, timedOut, disconnected 
    print(phoneCall.isComplete); // Whether the call is complete
    print(phoneCall.events); // A list of call events related to this specific call
}

You can read the PhoneCall.events as a stream, and when the call is completed, the plugin will close the stream gracefully. The plugin watches all in-flight calls, and will force any call to timeout eventually.

watchEvents(PhoneCall phoneCall) {
  phoneCall.eventStream.forEach((PhoneCallEvent event) {
    print("Event $event");
  });
  print("Call is complete");
}

Alternatively, you can just wait for the call to complete

waitForCompletion(PhoneCall phoneCall) async {
  await phoneCall.done;
  print("Call is completed");
}

Accessing in-flight calls

In-flight calls can be accessed like this:

final activeCalls = FutterPhoneState.activeCalls;

Note that activeCalls is an immutable copy of the calls at the moment you called activeCalls. It won't update automatically.

Watching all events

Instead of focusing on a single call, you can watch all the events. We recommend using
FlutterPhoneState.phoneCallEventStream - because this Stream incorporates our own tracking logic, call timeouts, failures, etc.

_watchAllPhoneCallEvents() {
  FlutterPhoneState.phoneCallEvents.forEach((PhoneCallEvent event) {
    final phoneCall = event.call;
    print("Got an event $event");
  });
  print("That loop ^^ won't end");
}

If you want, you can subscribe to the raw underlying events. Keep in mind that these events are limited.

_watchAllRawEvents() {
  FlutterPhoneState.rawPhoneEvent.forEach((RawPhoneEvent event) {
    final phoneCall = event.call;
    print("Got an event $event");
  });
  print("That loop ^^ won't end");
}

Limitations

Phone Numbers

Neither platform gives us phone numbers with call events. This is largely why we recommend initiating the call using the plugin, so you can tie it back to the original number.

And obviously, this means that you'll never get the phone number from an inbound call. Sorry!

Android

Android doesn't track nested calls. So, once the first call is active, if you receive another call, or make another call (by putting the first on hold), the second call will not be tracked at all.

Also, Android doesn't provide a unique call identifier, so any call events that occur can't be linked together with a platform-assigned id.

How does it work?

1. This plugin registers to AppLifecycleState events, and uses those events to determine when an outbound call has been placed vs cancelled.
2. When possible, the plugin links phone lifecycle events together by the platform-assigned call identifier. (this works on iOS)
3. The plugin checks the actual lifecycle states - for example, if one call is connected and the plugin gets a dialing event, it's clear that the dialing event must be for a new/different call, and therefore begins tracking it as a new call.