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Widget Inspector overlay does not respect SafeArea on Android with 3-button navigation #180956

@gktirkha

Description

@gktirkha

Steps to reproduce

  1. Setup an Android 16 emulator
  2. Enable 3-button navigation:
    • Settings → System → Navigation mode → 3-button navigation.
  3. Run any Flutter application in debug mode. ( on same android 16 emulator )
  4. Open the Flutter Widget Inspector.
  5. Interact with the Widget Inspector overlay.
  6. Observe that the Widget Inspector UI overlaps the system navigation bar and does not respect the SafeArea.

Expected results

The Widget Inspector overlay should respect system SafeArea / window insets, ensuring that all inspector controls and UI elements are fully visible and not overlapped by system navigation bars (including Android 3-button navigation).

Actual results

The Widget Inspector overlay does not respect the system SafeArea. On Android with 3-button navigation enabled, parts of the inspector UI overlap with and are partially hidden behind the system navigation bar, making some controls difficult or impossible to interact with.

Code sample

Flutter Counter App
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';

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

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  const MyApp({super.key});

  // This widget is the root of your application.
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
      title: 'Flutter Demo',
      theme: ThemeData(
        // This is the theme of your application.
        //
        // TRY THIS: Try running your application with "flutter run". You'll see
        // the application has a purple toolbar. Then, without quitting the app,
        // try changing the seedColor in the colorScheme below to Colors.green
        // and then invoke "hot reload" (save your changes or press the "hot
        // reload" button in a Flutter-supported IDE, or press "r" if you used
        // the command line to start the app).
        //
        // Notice that the counter didn't reset back to zero; the application
        // state is not lost during the reload. To reset the state, use hot
        // restart instead.
        //
        // This works for code too, not just values: Most code changes can be
        // tested with just a hot reload.
        colorScheme: .fromSeed(seedColor: Colors.deepPurple),
      ),
      home: const MyHomePage(title: 'Flutter Demo Home Page'),
    );
  }
}

class MyHomePage extends StatefulWidget {
  const MyHomePage({super.key, required this.title});

  // This widget is the home page of your application. It is stateful, meaning
  // that it has a State object (defined below) that contains fields that affect
  // how it looks.

  // This class is the configuration for the state. It holds the values (in this
  // case the title) provided by the parent (in this case the App widget) and
  // used by the build method of the State. Fields in a Widget subclass are
  // always marked "final".

  final String title;

  @override
  State<MyHomePage> createState() => _MyHomePageState();
}

class _MyHomePageState extends State<MyHomePage> {
  int _counter = 0;

  void _incrementCounter() {
    setState(() {
      // This call to setState tells the Flutter framework that something has
      // changed in this State, which causes it to rerun the build method below
      // so that the display can reflect the updated values. If we changed
      // _counter without calling setState(), then the build method would not be
      // called again, and so nothing would appear to happen.
      _counter++;
    });
  }

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    // This method is rerun every time setState is called, for instance as done
    // by the _incrementCounter method above.
    //
    // The Flutter framework has been optimized to make rerunning build methods
    // fast, so that you can just rebuild anything that needs updating rather
    // than having to individually change instances of widgets.
    return Scaffold(
      appBar: AppBar(
        // TRY THIS: Try changing the color here to a specific color (to
        // Colors.amber, perhaps?) and trigger a hot reload to see the AppBar
        // change color while the other colors stay the same.
        backgroundColor: Theme.of(context).colorScheme.inversePrimary,
        // Here we take the value from the MyHomePage object that was created by
        // the App.build method, and use it to set our appbar title.
        title: Text(widget.title),
      ),
      body: Center(
        // Center is a layout widget. It takes a single child and positions it
        // in the middle of the parent.
        child: Column(
          // Column is also a layout widget. It takes a list of children and
          // arranges them vertically. By default, it sizes itself to fit its
          // children horizontally, and tries to be as tall as its parent.
          //
          // Column has various properties to control how it sizes itself and
          // how it positions its children. Here we use mainAxisAlignment to
          // center the children vertically; the main axis here is the vertical
          // axis because Columns are vertical (the cross axis would be
          // horizontal).
          //
          // TRY THIS: Invoke "debug painting" (choose the "Toggle Debug Paint"
          // action in the IDE, or press "p" in the console), to see the
          // wireframe for each widget.
          mainAxisAlignment: .center,
          children: [
            const Text('You have pushed the button this many times:'),
            Text(
              '$_counter',
              style: Theme.of(context).textTheme.headlineMedium,
            ),
          ],
        ),
      ),
      floatingActionButton: FloatingActionButton(
        onPressed: _incrementCounter,
        tooltip: 'Increment',
        child: const Icon(Icons.add),
      ),
    );
  }
}

Screenshots or Video

Screenshots Image

Logs

Logs
Not applicable.

No relevant runtime logs or error messages are produced. This appears to be a UI layout issue in the Widget Inspector tooling rather than a runtime exception or framework log error.

Flutter Doctor output

Doctor output
Doctor summary (to see all details, run flutter doctor -v):
[✓] Flutter (Channel stable, 3.38.5, on macOS 15.7.1 24G231 darwin-x64, locale en-IN)
[✓] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices (Android SDK version 36.1.0)
[✓] Xcode - develop for iOS and macOS (Xcode 26.0.1)
[✓] Chrome - develop for the web
[✓] Connected device (3 available)
[✓] Network resources

• No issues found!

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    f: inspectorPart of widget inspector in framework.found in release: 3.38Found to occur in 3.38found in release: 3.40Found to occur in 3.40frameworkflutter/packages/flutter repository. See also f: labels.has reproducible stepsThe issue has been confirmed reproducible and is ready to work onplatform-androidAndroid applications specificallyteam-devexpOwned by the Developer Experience team

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