Flutter: Make a “Scroll Back To Top” button

The Back-To-Top button is helpful when the screen of your application is long and contains a lot of content. It allows the user to quickly scroll back to the top of the page.

In the beginning, the Back-To-Top button is invisible and only shows up when the user scrolls down a distance. This behavior eliminates redundancy and makes the screen cleaner when the view is at the very top of the page.

A Complete Example

App Preview

Complete code

Here’s the full source code (with explanations) that produces the demo above:

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';

void main() {
  runApp(const MyApp());
}

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  const MyApp({Key? key}) : super(key: key);

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return const MaterialApp(
      debugShowCheckedModeBanner: false,
      title: 'Kindacode.com',
      home: HomePage(),
    );
  }
}

class HomePage extends StatefulWidget {
  const HomePage({Key? key}) : super(key: key);

  @override
  State<HomePage> createState() => _HomePageState();
}

class _HomePageState extends State<HomePage> with TickerProviderStateMixin {
  // this variable determnines whether the back-to-top button is shown or not
  bool _showBackToTopButton = false;

  // scroll controller
  late ScrollController _scrollController;

  @override
  void initState() {
    _scrollController = ScrollController()
      ..addListener(() {
        setState(() {
          if (_scrollController.offset >= 400) {
            _showBackToTopButton = true; // show the back-to-top button
          } else {
            _showBackToTopButton = false; // hide the back-to-top button
          }
        });
      });

    super.initState();
  }

  @override
  void dispose() {
    _scrollController.dispose(); // dispose the controller
    super.dispose();
  }

  // This function is triggered when the user presses the back-to-top button
  void _scrollToTop() {
    _scrollController.animateTo(0,
        duration: const Duration(seconds: 3), curve: Curves.linear);
  }

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Scaffold(
      appBar: AppBar(
        title: const Text('Kindacode.com'),
      ),
      body: SingleChildScrollView(
        controller: _scrollController,
        child: Column(
          children: [
            // add a bunch of containers to make the screen longer
            Container(
              height: 600,
              color: Colors.amber,
            ),
            Container(
              height: 600,
              color: Colors.blue[100],
            ),
            Container(
              height: 600,
              color: Colors.red[200],
            ),
            Container(
              height: 600,
              color: Colors.orange,
            ),
            Container(
              height: 600,
              color: Colors.yellow,
            ),
            Container(
              height: 1200,
              color: Colors.lightGreen,
            ),
          ],
        ),
      ),
      // This is our back-to-top button
      floatingActionButton: _showBackToTopButton == false
          ? null
          : FloatingActionButton(
              onPressed: _scrollToTop,
              child: const Icon(Icons.arrow_upward),
            ),
    );
  }
}

The above example is quite simple, but it has provided you with all the necessary knowledge to deploy a back-to-top button in real production apps.

What’s next?

If you would like to learn more about Flutter, take a look at the following articles:

• Transform examples – Making fancy effects
• Scrolling to the desired item in a ListView, Flutter SliverList
• Tutorial and Example, FadeTransition example
• Flutter: Finding X and Y coordinates of a widget at runtime
• Adding and Customizing a Scrollbar in Flutter

You can also check out our Flutter topic page or Dart topic page for the latest tutorials and examples.