Is now a good time to use Capacitor in production?

[dariobednarski]

Hello everyone,

I’m considering adopting Capacitor for our production apps, but before moving forward I wanted to check in with the community about the project’s current status and long-term viability.

When I looked at the GitHub Insights, I noticed that both the number of commits and the number of active contributors have declined over the past few months.

https://github.com/ionic-team/capacitor/graphs/contributors

This raised a couple of questions for me:

1. Is the Capacitor project still actively maintained?
   1a) Have there been any plans or roadmaps shared for upcoming releases?
   1b) Are the core maintainers still committed to supporting and fixing issues in the near future?

2. Is it safe to rely on Capacitor in a production environment right now?
   2a) Are there any known “big” issues or regressions that might impact stability?
   2b) For those already using it in production, have you experienced any critical blockers or delays in receiving fixes?

3. What is the best way to contribute or help keep the project thriving?
   3a) Are there specific areas of the codebase that need more attention?
   3b) Would it be more helpful to file issues, review pull requests, or help with documentation and examples?

I really like Capacitor’s philosophy and feature set, but I don’t want to lock in if the project is slowing down or might soon stop receiving critical updates. I’d appreciate any insights from maintainers, contributors, or other users who have recently evaluated or used Capacitor in production.

Thank you in advance for any feedback or pointers!

Best regards,
Dario

[ygyg70]

Sharing here my experience - using Vue + Quasar + Capacitor for two projects that are in production
Technologies also include Typescript, vite, vitest, NightWatch
Reason is ability to reuse development skills and keep cost low
Never had an issue with the platform.
Plugins many times fall short, but then you can fork and modify, or contribute a change/fix to the community

[ygyg70]

I didn't work with Nuxt, however I can share what I like about Quasar - very good support for your project build. you can get up an running with a template app using TypeScript, Vite, Vitests web and Capacitor mobile in minutes.
Works with latest Capacitor version as there is no change from Quasar perspective there
For UI toolkit I would probably use https://primevue.org/, however I already have custom styling for the Quasar app that works for me.
The nice thing about being a web app is that you are not limited to the mobile framework you chose - you can use any HTML/JavaScript thing you like, including WASM (I am using a WASM barcode detector for iOS and the build system package the code for mobile deployments automatically, so it can work offline)
You can mix and match Quasar widgets and PrimeView widgets - no strings attached, unlike other cross platform technologies

Feel free to check it out:
https://girltelligence.com/
https://pillbugapp.com/

[dariobednarski]

Wow, looks nice! Thank you for your thoughts!

[dariobednarski]

@ygyg70 do you know why this app is not available for my device?

Have a Galaxy S22.

[ygyg70]

Found the device in the catalog, it is listed as supported.
Are you in the US? It is not available outside the US
Sharing here a discord server if you want to chat - I think it is best to keep this thread about Capacitor
https://discord.gg/hHvx8Zxc

[dariobednarski]

Okay, that's the point. I live in Germany.

[GamegineerLabs]

Hey @dariobednarski!

To answer your main question: Yes! A lot of people use Capacitor in Prod and it definitely helps make cross-platform development a lot easier. We have had a drop off in commits/contributors but a lot of that has had to do with us joining forces with OutSystems and the team working on integrating Capacitor into OS. The benefit of this is that OS is making substantial investments into Capacitor (i.e. increasing the number of developers working on Capacitor) so Capacitor isn't going anywhere!

To answer your other questions:
Is the Capacitor project still actively maintained? Yes
1a) Have there been any plans or roadmaps shared for upcoming releases? Not yet but I'm working on that plus rolling out a new way to triage feedback/feature requests. The thing we're working on at the moment is Cocoapods EOL and the transition to SPM on the iOS side
1b) Are the core maintainers still committed to supporting and fixing issues in the near future? Yes, OS has actually added engineering resources to the Capacitor team

Is it safe to rely on Capacitor in a production environment right now? Yes
2a) Are there any known “big” issues or regressions that might impact stability? The only thing I can think of is the sunsetting of the enterprise side of Ionic a few years from now that was recently announced. It's not Cap specific or really an issue for new apps but it would change your release strategy with a production app
2b) For those already using it in production, have you experienced any critical blockers or delays in receiving fixes? I'm tracking feedback so I'll be watching other's answers closely

What is the best way to contribute or help keep the project thriving? Feedback and plugin development! We have a Discord that I've been using to track feedback but I'm working on a streamlined/centralized way for this to happen
3a) Are there specific areas of the codebase that need more attention? Not that I can think of at the moment but 3rd party plugin maintenance has always been somewhat of a challenge and it's one of the biggest reasons someone would choose Capacitor
3b) Would it be more helpful to file issues, review pull requests, or help with documentation and examples? Yes, yes, and yes :D

Hopefully this helps but let me know and I'll do what I can!

Thanks,
Logan Brade
Dev Advocate

[dariobednarski]

@GamegineerLabs thank you so much for your answer. That's really good to hear since there aren't too many alternatives out there! :D

[netforce920-prog]

I am launching my first mobile app using Capacitor JS. I was looking for the same answer; just curiosity hitting internally, but thank you so much now.

[sandstrom]

@GamegineerLabs Have you thought about adding on more maintainers, from outside OS?

My impression is that Capacitor is overall very stable and used a lot, but it's also moving to be more of a foundation + marketing layer for OS, rather than a core product being sold.

As such, it wouldn't hurt to bring some maintainers over from other companies that are invested in Capacitor too. It would also help improve the longevity of the project (right now OS is invested, but maybe in 2 years some exec will just axe it?).

Just as an example there are PRs such as this one, which looks like a fairly straight forward bug fix to me, that's been idle for half a year.

#8271