VS Code (OSX) Flutter hot reload is not triggered by save

Question

After upgrading VS Code version to 1.32.1 automatic hot reloading is not triggered by saving / auto saving. It worked like a charm before.

Hot reloading still works

Answer 1

I had the same problem. Currently I am using VSCode version 1.39.2.

For the hot reload to work you need to start debugging in VSCode.

As it says in the docs: "Only Flutter apps in debug mode can be hot reloaded." https://flutter.dev/docs/development/tools/hot-reload

You can find that option on the VSCode's top navigation inside Debug or with the shortcut F5.

You don't need to do flutter run on your terminal, nor even on VSCode, is just start debugging and it will launch lib/main.dart in debug mode.

If that doesn't solve the problem, try downgrading to the last version of VSCode.