All 7 Local Data Storage with SharedPreferences questions
More in Local Data Storage with SharedPreferences
What is the shared_preferences package, and what kinds of genuinely simple data is it actually genuinely well suited for storing directly on a user's own device? How do you actually properly read and write different basic primitive data types, such as a String, an int, and a bool, using the shared_preferences package's own available methods? How can you properly store a genuinely more complex object, such as a List of strings or a Map, using SharedPreferences, given that it only genuinely natively supports fairly simple basic primitive types directly? Why should genuinely sensitive data, such as an authentication token or a password, never actually be stored using regular SharedPreferences, and what should genuinely be used instead? How can you properly and safely migrate existing data already stored using SharedPreferences over to a genuinely more full featured local database such as Hive, once an app's own particular storage needs have genuinely grown beyond what simple key value storage alone can reasonably handle? What are the practical performance considerations of reading from SharedPreferences repeatedly throughout your app, and how does properly caching those particular values in memory help meaningfully avoid genuinely unnecessary repeated disk access?
Advertisement
Flutter › Local Data Storage with SharedPreferences

How does SharedPreferences actually genuinely work differently underneath on Android compared to iOS, in terms of exactly what genuine underlying native storage mechanism each platform actually respectively uses?

Intermediate

Answer

On Android, SharedPreferences is genuinely implemented directly on top of the platform's own native SharedPreferences API, which internally genuinely stores its own data as a simple XML file, while on iOS it is genuinely implemented instead on top of NSUserDefaults, Apple's own equivalent native platform mechanism specifically for storing this exact same kind of simple key value preference data, and while these genuine underlying native implementation details are generally kept properly and fully transparent from your own actual Flutter code, understanding this particular fact helps clarify precisely why this exact same package is genuinely well suited specifically for simple preferences data rather than genuinely large or particularly performance sensitive data.
// Flutter's shared_preferences package delegates to each platform's own
// respective native preference storage mechanism underneath
Real-world example A developer investigating why a specific stored preference value was not actually genuinely persisting correctly on one particular platform discovers a subtle platform specific difference in exactly how that native underlying storage mechanism actually properly handles a genuinely very large stored string value.

Common follow-ups: What genuinely practical size limits exist for a value actually stored using SharedPreferences on each individual respective platform?;How does this exact same underlying native storage difference genuinely relate to properly implementing a fully custom native platform channel instead?

Platform Channels (Native Android & iOS Integration);Flutter App Security Best Practices
All 7 Local Data Storage with SharedPreferences questions