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Capacitor

Using Environment Variables and Secrets in Capawesome Cloud Builds

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.

Announcing Open Source AI Agent Skills for Capacitor

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.

How to Use CocoaPods Instead of SPM with Capacitor

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.

How to Sign In with Okta Using Capacitor

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.

How to Use Better Auth in Ionic and Capacitor Apps

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.

The App Update Delivery Guide for Capacitor

Keeping your users on the latest version of your app isn't just nice to have — it's critical for security, performance, and delivering the best experience. In this guide, you'll learn how to build a complete update delivery strategy for your Capacitor app by combining two plugins: the App Update plugin for native app store updates and the Live Update plugin for Over-The-Air (OTA) updates.

How to Reduce the Bundle Size of Capacitor Live Updates

If you're using Over-The-Air (OTA) live updates to ship web layer changes to your Capacitor or Ionic app, the size of your update bundles directly affects how fast those changes reach your users. Large bundles mean slower downloads, higher data transfer costs, and a worse experience for users on mobile networks. The good news is that a few targeted optimizations can make a dramatic difference — one team we worked with reduced their average update from ~48 MB to ~9 MB. This guide walks through the most effective ways to reduce your live update bundle size.

Why Every Capacitor Team Needs a CI/CD Pipeline

Somewhere right now, a developer is building a Capacitor app on their laptop, signing it manually, and uploading it to the App Store — while hoping they didn't forget a step. It works, until it doesn't. A wrong signing certificate, a missing environment variable, or a skipped test is all it takes to ship a broken build to production.

If your team is still releasing manually, you're spending time on work that should be automated — and accepting risk that doesn't need to exist. This post makes the case for why CI/CD should be a priority for every Capacitor team and how you can get there without weeks of setup.

How to Sign In with Apple Using Capacitor

Sign in with Apple lets users authenticate with their Apple ID, offering a privacy-focused alternative to other social logins. Apple requires apps that offer third-party sign-in to also support Sign in with Apple. The Apple Sign-In plugin provides a straightforward way to integrate Apple Sign-In into your Ionic or Capacitor app on Android, iOS, and web. This guide walks you through setting up the required credentials, configuring the plugin for each platform, and implementing the sign-in flow.