Installing Capacitor
There are two ways to start using Capacitor: adding Capacitor to an existing frontend project (recommended), or starting a fresh project. Capacitor was designed primarily to drop-in to existing frontend projects, but comes with a simple starting project structure if you'd like to start fresh.
Capacitor provides a native mobile runtime and API layer for web apps. It does not come with any specific set of UI controls which you will most likely need unless you're building a game or something similar.
We strongly recommend starting a Capacitor project with your mobile frontend framework of choice (such as Ionic Framework).
Before you start
Make sure you have all the required Dependencies installed for the platforms you will be building for. Most importantly, make sure you update CocoaPods using pod repo update before starting a new project, if you plan on building for iOS using a Mac.
Adding Capacitor to an existing Ionic App
Adding Capacitor to an existing web app
Capacitor was designed to drop into any existing modern JavaScript web app. A valid package.json file and a folder containing all web assets are required to get started. In addition, a <head> element is needed in the main index.html file, as Capacitor is injected there upon app initialization.
To add Capacitor to your web app, run the following commands:
cd my-app
npm install @capacitor/core @capacitor/cli
Then, initialize Capacitor with your app information.
Note: npx is a new utility available in npm 5 or above that executes local binaries/scripts to avoid global installs.
npx cap init
This command will prompt you to enter the name of your app and the app id (the package name for Android and the bundle identifier for iOS). Use the --web-dir flag to set the web assets folder (the default is www).
Next, install any of the desired native platforms:
npx cap add android
npx cap add ios
🎉 Capacitor is now installed in your project. 🎉
Optional: Starting a fresh project
Capacitor comes with a stock project structure if you'd rather start fresh and plan to add a UI/frontend framework separately.
To create it, run:
npx @capacitor/cli create
This command will prompt you to enter the name of your app and the app id (the package name for Android and the bundle identifier for iOS).
This will create a very simple starting app with no UI library.
Where to go next
Make sure you have the Required Dependencies installed, including PWA Elements, then proceed to the Developer Workflow Guide to learn how Capacitor apps are built.