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.
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 bandwidth 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.
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.
Need to deliver beta builds to testers, target updates by app version, or A/B test features — all without a new app store release? Channel surfing with the Live Update plugin lets you switch between update channels on the fly and deliver different app experiences to different user segments.
Many developers already use TypeORM on the backend to manage databases with TypeScript decorators and a familiar repository pattern. The good news: the same approach works in Capacitor apps too. The SQLite plugin ships with a built-in SQLiteConnection class that plugs directly into TypeORM's DataSource — no additional adapter package required. This guide walks you through the complete setup, from defining entities to running queries and managing migrations.
Working with raw SQL in a Capacitor app gets messy fast — queries are just strings, results are untyped, and refactoring a column name means hunting through your entire codebase. Kysely solves this with a type-safe query builder that catches errors at compile time while keeping you close to SQL. In this guide, you'll learn how to set up Kysely with the SQLite plugin using the new @capawesome/capacitor-sqlite-kysely dialect.
If you're building a Capacitor app that needs a local database, you've probably dealt with writing raw SQL strings and mapping results manually. It works, but it's error-prone and doesn't scale well. Drizzle ORM offers a better approach: a lightweight, type-safe ORM that lets you define your schema in TypeScript and write queries that feel like SQL — with full autocompletion and compile-time checks. In this guide, you'll learn how to set up Drizzle ORM with the SQLite plugin using the new @capawesome/capacitor-sqlite-drizzle adapter.
Setting up in-app purchases in a mobile app involves more than just writing code. Between Apple's agreements, Google's compliance checks, and platform-specific gotchas, there's a lot of ground to cover before you can charge your first customer. Here are some practical tips to help you get started with in-app purchases on both iOS and Android using the Purchases plugin.
Auth0 is one of the most popular identity platforms, offering authentication and authorization as a service. If you're building a cross-platform app with Capacitor, the OAuth plugin makes it easy to integrate Auth0 using the Authorization Code flow with PKCE. This guide walks you through application setup, sign-in, token management, and fetching user profile information.
Google Sign-In is one of the most widely used authentication methods in mobile and web apps. It lets users sign in with their existing Google account in just a few taps, avoiding the need to create and remember yet another password. Whether you're building with Ionic or another framework, the Google Sign-In plugin provides a simple way to integrate Google Sign-In into your Capacitor app on Android, iOS, and web. This guide walks you through creating the required credentials, configuring the plugin for each platform, and implementing the sign-in flow.