Support for attachments inside a message

[Gaurav-CareMonitor]

Feature Request: Attachments Inside a Message

Summary

Currently, messages in flutter_chat_ui support basic text and media types individually, but there's no native support to include attachments (like images, files, or documents) embedded within a message block.

Motivation

Supporting attachments inside a single message would:

• Improve the UX by allowing users to send contextual media alongside text.
• Align the chat UI experience with modern messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Slack.
• Reduce the need to split content into multiple message bubbles.

Example Use Case

A message could look like:

Hey, here's the report you asked for:
[report.pdf]

Desired Behavior

• A single message bubble can contain both:
  • Text
  • One or more attachments (images, files, audio)
• Optional: tap or long-press support for downloading/viewing attachments

Suggestions

• Extend the Message model to support an attachments array.
• Render attachments below the text in the same bubble.
• Provide default renderers for image, audio, and document types, with customization options.

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Let me know if this feature is already under consideration.

[demchenkoalex]

The plan is as follows: eventually, the Composer will support sending various file types alongside the input - so, for example, the user will be able to send an image with accompanying text, or a file with a caption.

However, I don’t currently plan to support sending multiple different file types together in a single message. For that, I recommend using a custom message.

The reason is that most messengers typically allow only one type of content with a caption (e.g. an image with text or a file with text). AI agents like ChatGPT do support multiple files, but even then, they are sent as separate messages.

The use case you’re describing is quite niche, in my opinion - and implementing support for it across every message type would be a significant amount of work for something with limited demand.

[demchenkoalex]

That being said, I’ll still need to create preview widgets for each message type, which will be shown inside the Composer. So as soon as this Composer feature is live, you’ll be able to:

• Add all necessary attachments along with a text input
• Access all the preview widgets with full customisation
• Store attachments in the metadata of a custom message and use my preview widgets along with the text message code to combine them however you like in your custom message - giving you exactly the behaviour you need.

[nicolasbraun]

My 2 cents on this:

This is a 2 step feature, and I'm really not sure the Composer should be modified.

Step1: supporting in the messages UI

• ImageMessage and VideoMessage already have the text prop that is not currently rendered by the UI widgets, it can be easily added to other messages types.
• PR Allow for top widgets within the bubble #814 changes the layouts to use a Column could be easily added for FileMessages and Video, i will look into this.
• User can then have their own UI / Custom composer / modal page to add a message priori to sending, most apps (Whatsapp, Signal) do this and do not rely on the "default" Composer

Optional Step2

• Maybe what you said, but most app do not do it
• Note we could provide a showPresendAttachmentModal page as part of the package to ease integration work.

I was planning to do it for my app anyway, happy to share. I was just waiting on some PR merges to avoid loosing myself between all of those.