Announcing Capacitor 8: Elevating Cross-Platform Native Experiences

Capacitor, our robust cross-platform native runtime for web applications, continues its rapid growth, nearing one million weekly downloads and achieving a new peak of nearly 930,000 downloads in mid-November.

We are thrilled to announce the release of Capacitor 8, a significant advancement in our mission to simplify the development of high-quality native experiences using web technologies, ensuring a more modern and consistent approach across all platforms.

What's New in Capacitor 8

Swift Package Manager (SPM) by Default on iOS

Capacitor 8 now adopts Swift Package Manager (SPM) as the default dependency manager for all new iOS projects. This transition replaces CocoaPods for new setups, aligning with the iOS ecosystem's steady shift towards SPM as the preferred package manager. Existing CocoaPods-based projects will continue to function seamlessly, and CocoaPods remains supported for the time being.

For a deeper dive into SPM and iOS package management, refer to Mark Anderson’s blog post: "Swift Package Manager and Capacitor."

Android Edge-to-Edge Support

Modern Android devices emphasize immersive, full-screen layouts. Capacitor 8 addresses this by introducing built-in edge-to-edge support through a new internal SystemBars plugin. This plugin automatically manages status and navigation bar appearance and insets, ensuring your application's layout renders flawlessly on contemporary Android devices.

This functionality also powers the new public SystemBars API, granting developers precise control when needed. For projects requiring support for older Android versions that rely on @capacitor/status-bar, both plugins can be used concurrently, as Capacitor intelligently applies the appropriate behavior based on the device’s Android version.

Updating to Capacitor 8

Capacitor 8 represents a continued commitment to modernizing the native layer across both iOS and Android, keeping your projects synchronized with the latest platform standards.

When you are ready to upgrade, consult the Capacitor 8 Update Guide, which walks through the recommended upgrade path and any changes to be aware of.

Thank You!

A heartfelt thank you to the dedicated Capacitor team for their immense hard work and meticulous care in shaping this release. We also extend our gratitude to all community contributors whose bug reports, fixes, and valuable feedback continuously help us improve with each new version. Finally, thank you to the broader Capacitor community for your ongoing investment and belief in this project. We eagerly anticipate continuing to build the future of cross-platform development together.