Capacitor 8 ships with Swift Package Manager as the default for iOS, targets Android SDK 36, and requires Node.js 22+. Whether you prefer an automated CLI migration, an AI-assisted upgrade, or full manual control, this guide walks you through all three approaches so you can pick the one that fits your project best.
Capacitor 8 makes Swift Package Manager the default on iOS, bumps the Android target to SDK 36, and upgrades to Kotlin 2.2. This guide covers three ways to bring your Capacitor plugin up to date — an automated CLI tool, AI-powered Capawesome Skills, or a fully manual upgrade.
If you've ever pushed a one-line bug fix and then waited days for app store approval, you know the frustration. Traditional mobile releases are slow, manual, and often out of sync with how fast your team actually ships code. Live updates — also known as Over-The-Air (OTA) updates — are changing that by letting Capacitor teams push web layer changes directly to users' devices, no app store submission required. In this post, we'll look at how live updates are reshaping mobile app deployment and why more teams are making the switch.
When building mobile apps in the cloud, it's common to need different configuration values depending on the environment. A staging build might use a different API endpoint than a production build, or you might need to inject API keys that shouldn't be committed to your repository.
With Capawesome Cloud, you can define environments, add environment variables and secrets, and customize the build stack using reserved variables—all without changing your source code.
AI coding agents are becoming an essential part of how developers build apps. But even the best agents struggle with framework-specific tasks like upgrading between Capacitor versions, configuring native plugins, or setting up cloud builds — there's just too much platform-specific knowledge involved. That's why we're releasing 7 open source agent skills that teach AI assistants how to handle the most common Capacitor tasks, from plugin setup to full platform upgrades.
Version 4.5.0 of the Capawesome CLI is here, and it's packed with new features that have been added since the 4.0.0 release. The highlights include full command line management of signing certificates and app store destinations, a streamlined build workflow, and interactive prompts that make the CLI easier to use than ever.
Sometimes you need direct control over which Live Update channel a specific device uses. With forced channel assignments, you can now override the SDK-selected channel on any device — whether you're debugging an issue, testing a new release, or managing a customer's device manually.
Capacitor 8 made Swift Package Manager (SPM) the default dependency manager for new iOS projects. While SPM is the future of iOS dependency management, it still has some rough edges that can block real-world projects. In those cases, CocoaPods remains a solid alternative. This post covers when you might want to stick with CocoaPods and how to set it up.
Okta is a widely used identity platform that powers single sign-on (SSO) and user management for thousands of organizations. If you need to add Okta authentication to a Capacitor app, the OAuth plugin supports the Authorization Code flow with PKCE out of the box. In this guide, you'll learn how to register your app in Okta, implement sign-in and sign-out, manage tokens, and retrieve user profile data on Android, iOS, and web. This is also a great alternative to Ionic Auth Connect for teams looking for a lightweight, open approach.
Better Auth is an open-source, framework-agnostic authentication framework for TypeScript. Whether you're building with Ionic, Angular, React, or Vue, the Better Auth JavaScript SDK works out of the box in your Capacitor app — no special configuration needed. Since Capacitor apps are essentially web apps running in a native WebView, you can use the SDK directly for standard authentication flows. You only need Capacitor plugins when it comes to social login flows that require native functionality, like opening a browser window or using platform-specific sign-in APIs. This guide shows you how to set up mobile authentication with Better Auth in your Capacitor app using the Apple Sign-In, Google Sign-In, and OAuth plugins.