Capawesome Cloud now officially supports Apache Cordova. That means out-of-the-box native iOS and Android builds, automated App Store submissions, and — the part we're most excited about — over-the-air Live Updates through our brand new Cordova Live Update plugin.
With Ionic Appflow winding down (it stopped selling to new customers in February 2025 and reaches full end-of-life on December 31, 2027), Cordova teams have been left without a real option for cloud builds and live updates. Consider this their new home.
Why Cordova, Why Now
Most modern build and update services target Capacitor or React Native and treat Cordova as an afterthought, if they support it at all. But Cordova hasn't gone anywhere — it's still actively maintained by The Apache Software Foundation, and a large number of teams continue to ship and grow production Cordova apps. Those teams deserve the same first-class tooling everyone else gets.
Native Builds Without the Config
Building a Cordova app for iOS and Android usually means maintaining your own macOS runners and babysitting YAML pipelines. Capawesome Cloud removes all of that — you connect your Git repository, and we build it. No build configuration files, no CI service to wire up, no Mac required.
The Headline: Live Updates for Cordova
Native builds and publishing matter, but live updates are why most teams came to Appflow in the first place. Pushing a JavaScript, HTML, or CSS fix over the air — and having it on every device in minutes instead of waiting days for app review — is hard to give up once you've had it.
One detail Cordova developers will appreciate: the plugin works with the stock Cordova WebView. Unlike Appflow's plugin, it does not require cordova-plugin-ionic-webview. It hooks into Cordova's official scheme handlers instead.
Installation is a single command, with your Capawesome Cloud app ID passed as a variable:
cordova plugin add @capawesome/cordova-live-update --variable APP_ID=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
You configure the plugin through preferences in your config.xml. The background strategy checks for updates on launch and resume, downloads them silently, and applies them on the next start:
For rollback to work, your app needs to confirm it started successfully. Call ready() as early as possible once Cordova is initialized:
document.addEventListener("deviceready", async () => {
await cordova.plugins.LiveUpdate.ready();
});
Shipping an update is then just a matter of building your web assets and uploading them as a bundle:
npm run build
npx @capawesome/cli apps:liveupdates:upload --channel production
See It Without Signing Up
Want to see Live Updates in action before wiring anything up yourself? We maintain an official Cordova Live Update Demo app that shows the plugin downloading and applying an over-the-air bundle on a real device. There's nothing to sign up for and nothing to deploy — clone the repo, build the app, and watch a live update land.
A Drop-In Replacement for Appflow
If you're coming from Appflow, the move is meant to be painless. Appflow's app ID becomes your Capawesome Cloud app ID, channels stay channels, and the update methods have direct equivalents. You swap cordova-plugin-ionic for @capawesome/cordova-live-update, point it at Capawesome Cloud, and keep shipping.
Get Started
Cordova support is live right now, and the free tier is enough to ship your first live update. Read the full announcement on our blog, and let us know what you're building.
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