Capacitor Live Updates SDK is Now Generally Available

The Appflow team is excited to announce the GA release of a new, Capacitor-based Live Updates SDK that unlocks significant performance improvements in the Live Updates product suite. Teams of all sizes can instantly deploy code updates to Capacitor apps using this powerful feature of Appflow, Ionic’s mobile CI/CD platform.

About Appflow Live Updates

Appflow Live Updates lets you deploy web code changes directly to users’ installed apps without requiring them to download a new version from the app stores. Think of it as a silent upgrade in the background that can fix bugs, introduce new features, and optimize performance. 

This makes for a much better user experience and is a powerful tool to react quickly to user feedback or issues. Because you are only deploying changes to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, these updates are app store compliant and allow for strategies like A/B testing, rollbacks, and more.

What’s New?

The SDK has been rewritten from the ground up using native mobile technology, offering a variety of enhancements.

• Improved Download Speed: The beta testing period showed impressive gains in the speed live updates are downloaded on user devices – ranging from a couple of seconds to tens of seconds based on the app.
• Parallelized Downloading: Your app pulls in updates even quicker than before.
• Revamped Documentation: Completely rewritten to make setting up and deploying live updates easier. Featuring multiple deployment strategies to choose from, details on how we make live updates incredibly fast, and a short guide on how to migrate from the Cordova SDK to the new Capacitor-based version.
• Enhanced SDK API: The Live Updates API offers the most control over the user experience. We added the ability to dynamically configure the SDK at runtime and, by popular demand, included the ability to change the Live Update channel.

This is only the start of more improvements to come.

Getting Started

Whether you were beta testing the SDK or are brand new, begin by installing the most recent package:

npm @capacitor/live-updates@latest
npx cap sync

From there, follow the robust installation guide to configure the SDK, pick the correct live update strategy for your app, and ship some updates to your users!

Using the original Cordova-based SDK? Follow the guide for a seamless migration process.

Live Updates for Everyone

A special thanks to the Ionic Community for their testing and feedback during the Live Updates SDK beta period. Your valuable feedback was instrumental in shaping the initial version. Stay tuned for more innovative updates to come!

Live Updates are available on all Appflow plans. Get started with a free account today!