FAQs
Below are a list of commonly asked Capacitor questions. If you don't find an answer here, check out our forum or our Discord. Check out the sidebar for a list of frequently asked questions ๐
What platforms does Capacitor support?
Capacitor can target virtually any advice with our official and community platforms.
Official Platforms
Capacitor officially supports the following platforms:
- iOS 13+
- Android 5.1+
- Requires Chrome WebView 60+
- Modern Web Browsers
- Chrome
- Firefox
- Safari
- Edge
- Windows 10+
info
Windows support requires a paid subscription. To get access to it, get in touch with our sales team.
Community Platforms
Capacitor also has community platforms to target cross platform desktop frameworks. The current community targets are the following.
- Electron
- Tauri (alpha)
Do I need to use Ionic Framework with Capacitor?
No! You don't! Capacitor works with any web application, not just ones built with other Ionic tools. If you want a specific look and feel for your Capacitor app, and Ionic Framework isn't the right UI toolkit for you, you shouldn't feel forced to use it. There are plenty of apps in both app stores that utilize Capacitor and not Ionic Framework.
Where can I find plugins for my Capacitor project?
To find plugins for your project, you should check the following places in this order.
Capacitor Community GitHub โก
The Capacitor Community GitHub organization lists plugins that our excellent community of developers creates. They are Capacitor first plugins that are actively developed and should work in any Capacitor 3+ project. If you need a plugin, this should be one of the first places you look.
Awesome Capacitor ๐
Like many other Awesome lists, Awesome Capacitor is a community-curated list of great Capacitor plugins. If you can't find an official or community plugin, chances are that someone has already made the plugin you are looking for here.
Project Fugu ๐ก
Project Fugu is the Chromium Team's tracker of web APIs that have been added to Chromium browsers. While some features may not be supported on both Android and iOS, features like Web Share and ContactsManager (Android Only), may replace @capacitor/share or @capacitor-community/contacts for your use case.
You can Can I Use...? to check if you can use these features on Android and iOS without needing any native plugins.
Cordova Plugins ๐
Did you know Capacitor supports Cordova plugins? If you are migrating off of Cordova, or have a Cordova plugin that doesn't have a Capacitor equivalent, you can use most Cordova plugins directly in Capacitor. You can read our guide on how to use Cordova plugins in Capacitor.
Can I build iOS apps without a Mac with Capacitor?
Short answer, no. The longer answer is that while you can use cloud services like Ionic AppFlow, you won't be able to test your application on a device or simulator. You should always be sure to test your application with a physical device to make sure that your Capacitor application is usable to people with Apple products.
Why do I get a blank screen when running on an Android emulator?
Capacitor requires Android 5.1 as well as a WebView version of 60 or higher. If you create an Android 6 or 7 emulator for example, the newest version of the WebView won't be installed, and you'll get a blank white screen. To get around this, you can install a newer Android emulator for testing your application.