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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 Capacitor 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.
For raw API usage, see the Capacitor SQLite plugin documentation.
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.
For the Capacitor SQLite plugin API, see the plugin documentation.