Capacitor 8 made Swift Package Manager (SPM) the default dependency manager for new iOS projects, and CocoaPods is officially in maintenance mode. If you maintain an existing Capacitor app on CocoaPods, migrating to SPM is the path forward. This post walks you through what changes on the iOS side and three ways to perform the migration.
If you already have an Angular web app, you can wrap it into a native iOS and Android app without rewriting your entire codebase. In this guide, we use a real demo app called Trip Expenses to walk through the full process with Capacitor, Ionic, Firebase, and a handful of native plugins.
If you're building a Capacitor app on Windows or Linux, you've probably hit the same wall every cross-platform developer eventually runs into: shipping to the App Store requires macOS. Xcode, codesign, and the iOS simulator all live exclusively on Apple hardware, and Apple isn't planning to change that any time soon. The good news is that you don't actually need a Mac on your desk to build, sign, and ship an iOS app.
One of the most common questions we get is: "What's the difference between using Live Updates and server.url in Capacitor?"
Many developers use the server.url configuration option to load their app's web content from a remote server in production — even though it was never designed for that.
In this post, we'll break down what each approach does, how they compare, and why Live Updates are the better choice for production apps.
Capacitor 8 made Swift Package Manager (SPM) the default dependency manager for iOS. If you maintain a Capacitor plugin that still relies on CocoaPods and Objective-C bridge files, your plugin won't work out of the box in SPM-based projects. This post walks you through what needs to change and three ways to get it done.
Getting a test build onto a tester's phone should be simple — but if you've ever dealt with TestFlight review delays, Firebase profile installations, or setting up OTA manifest files by hand, you know it's anything but. In this guide, we'll walk through how to distribute iOS and Android builds to testers and stakeholders with just a link or QR code, no app store submission required.
If you've ever hit a cryptic code signing error in Xcode and spent hours trying to figure out what went wrong, you're not alone. iOS code signing is one of the most confusing parts of iOS development, especially for developers coming from web or Android backgrounds. The good news is that once you understand the pieces and how they fit together, it all starts to make sense.
In this guide, you'll learn what certificates and provisioning profiles are, how they work together, and which combinations you need for each type of build.
Capacitor 8 now supports Swift Package Manager (SPM) package traits, bringing feature-flag-like capabilities to your iOS plugin dependencies. If you've ever needed to toggle an optional dependency — like enabling SQLCipher encryption for a SQLite plugin — you can now do it directly from your Capacitor config. This was previously only possible with CocoaPods subspecs, and since SPM is the default package manager in Capacitor, this fills an important gap.
Getting CI/CD to work for a web app is usually painless. Getting it to work for a Capacitor app? That's where things get interesting. Between code signing, native build environments, and app store submission quirks, teams run into the same problems again and again. The good news is that most of these pitfalls are predictable — and avoidable if you know what to watch out for.
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.