Capacitor is a cross-platform app development framework that lets you build native applications for iOS, Android, and the web from a single JavaScript codebase.
Capacitor solves the problem of maintaining separate codebases for different platforms by providing a unified API layer and code execution environment that bridges web code to native SDKs. It works by allowing developers to call native functionality directly from web code and by supporting the creation of custom native plugins written in Swift for iOS and Kotlin or Java for Android. The framework also provides first-class Progressive Web App support, enabling the same codebase to be deployed to app stores and the mobile web.
Capacitor suits teams building cross-platform mobile applications who want to leverage web technologies and JavaScript expertise. It works well for new projects and as a drop-in addition to existing modern web apps. The framework is designed to work independently of any particular web framework, though the Ionic Framework is recommended for new applications to handle native UI implementation and development tooling. Compared to Cordova, which it maintains backward compatibility with, Capacitor takes a more modern approach to tooling and plugin development and treats native projects as source artifacts rather than build artifacts.
The project maintains a substantial base of adopters, as evidenced by the fact that almost all open issues are raised by outside users rather than the core team. First responses to issues and pull requests typically arrive within one to two weeks. Work in the issue tracker is dominated by bug reports and Android platform issues, with many items requiring reproduction steps before proceeding.
