Environment Setup

Capacitor has a number of dependencies depending on which platforms you’re targeting and which operating systems you are developing on.

Requirements

You will need at least NodeJS 12 LTS or later to get started. For specific platforms, follow each guide below to ensure you have the correct dependencies installed.

iOS Development

To build iOS apps, you will need macOS. You will also need to download and set up Xcode. If you are developing on Linux or Windows, you can skip this section.

Ionic Appflow can be used to perform iOS cloud builds if you don’t have a Mac.

CocoaPods

Install CocoaPods, which is used to manage Capacitor packages for iOS.

sudo gem install cocoapods

Xcode Command Line Tools

Install the Xcode Command Line Tools by opening Xcode -> Preferences -> Locations and selecting the latest version in the dropdown.

Android Development

To build Android apps, you will need to download and set up Android Studio.

Android SDK

Developing Android apps requires some Android SDK packages to be installed. Make sure to install the Android SDK Tools, and a version of the Android SDK Platforms for API 21 or greater.

In Android Studio open Tools -> SDK Manager from the menu and install the platform versions you’d like to test with in the SDK Platforms tab:

In the SDK Tools tab, make sure to install at least the following:

• Android SDK Build-Tools
• Android SDK Command-line Tools
• Android Emulator
• Android SDK Platform-Tools