capacitor

Capacitor is an open-source cross-platform runtime that lets you run web apps natively on iOS, Android, Web, and more from a single codebase. It provides a cross-platform API and code execution layer so web code can call Native SDKs, and it supports writing custom native plugins when an app needs them. First-class Progressive Web App support means one app can target both app stores and the mobile web. Getting started is designed as a drop-in for any modern web app: install @capacitor/core and @capacitor/cli, run npx cap init, then add platforms such as @capacitor/android or @capacitor/ios with npx cap add. For new projects, the README recommends pairing Capacitor with the Ionic Framework and starting via the Ionic CLI with ionic start --capacitor. Capacitor ships a Plugin API for building native plugins. Plugins can live inside a Capacitor app or be packaged as an npm dependency for community use; the README encourages Swift for iOS plugins and Kotlin or Java for Android. The project notes backward compatibility with a large majority of Cordova plugins, while taking a more modern approach to tooling and plugin development and treating native projects as source artifacts rather than build artifacts. Using Ionic Framework is optional; without it, developers may need to implement native UI and configure tooling such as livereload themselves. The repository includes contribution guidelines and credits its community of contributors.