Uniting our global community of Ionic developers and contributors. May 25, 2022.

Updating Capacitor to 2.0 in your app

Capacitor 2 makes some tooling updates including the adoption of Swift 5 in iOS and AndroidX for Android.

Update Capacitor dependencies

First, update Capacitor Core and the CLI:

npm install @capacitor/cli@2 @capacitor/core@2

Next, update each Capacitor platform that you use:

# iOS
npm install @capacitor/ios@2
npx cap sync ios

# Android
npm install @capacitor/android@2
npx cap sync android

# Electron
cd electron
npm install @capacitor/electron@2

Backward Incompatible Plugin Changes

Camera
- saveToGallery default value is now false on all platforms
- if allowEditing is true and the edit is canceled, the original image is returned
Push Notifications
- permissions will no longer be requested when register() is called, use requestPermission()
- PushNotificationChannel renamed to NotificationChannel
Local Notifications
- permissions will no longer be requested when register() is called, use requestPermission()
- schedule() now returns LocalNotificationScheduleResult
Toast
- unify duration across platforms: short 2000ms, long 3500ms
Geolocation
- use Fused Location Provider on Android
- requireAltitude removed from GeolocationOptions
- change native location accuracy values on iOS (more info)
Filesystem
- createIntermediateDirectories was removed from MkdirOptions (use recursive instead)
- recursive option added to writeFile, which changes behavior on Android and web (more info)
- Application directory option removed because it was broken
Device
- batteryLevel and isCharging removed from getInfo(), use getBatteryInfo()
Modals
- inputPlaceholder sets a placeholder instead of text, use inputText instead
App
- AppRestoredResult is optional now, returned only if succeeded, otherwise it returns an error
Clipboard
- ReadOptions was removed

iOS

Capacitor 2 requires Xcode 11+.

Update native project to Swift 5

Capacitor 2 uses Swift 5. It’s recommended to update your native project to also use Swift 5.

From Xcode click Edit -> Convert -> To Current Swift Syntax.
App.app will appear selected, click Next button.
Then a message will say No source changes necessary.
Finally, click the Update button.

Android

AndroidX

Capacitor 2 uses AndroidX for Android support library dependencies as recommended by Google, so the native project needs to be updated to use AndroidX as well.

From Android Studio do Refactor -> Migrate to AndroidX. Then click on Migrate button and finally click on Do Refactor.

If using Cordova or Capacitor plugins that don’t use AndroidX yet, you can use jetifier tool to patch them.

npm install jetifier
npx jetifier

To run it automatically after every package install, add "postinstall": "jetifier" in the package.json.

Create common variables

Create a android/variables.gradle file with this content:

ext {
  minSdkVersion = 21
  compileSdkVersion = 29
  targetSdkVersion = 29
  androidxAppCompatVersion = '1.1.0'
  androidxCoreVersion =  '1.2.0'
  androidxMaterialVersion =  '1.1.0-rc02'
  androidxBrowserVersion =  '1.2.0'
  androidxLocalbroadcastmanagerVersion =  '1.0.0'
  firebaseMessagingVersion =  '20.1.2'
  playServicesLocationVersion =  '17.0.0'
  junitVersion =  '4.12'
  androidxJunitVersion =  '1.1.1'
  androidxEspressoCoreVersion =  '3.2.0'
  cordovaAndroidVersion =  '7.0.0'
}

In android/build.gradle file, add apply from: "variables.gradle":

         classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:4.1.1'
         classpath 'com.google.gms:google-services:4.3.3'

         // NOTE: Do not place your application dependencies here; they belong
         // in the individual module build.gradle files
     }
 }

+apply from: "variables.gradle"

 allprojects {
     repositories {
         google()
         jcenter()

Use common variables

If you created the variables.gradle file, update your project to use them.

In the android/app/build.gradle file, make the following updates:

 android {
-    compileSdkVersion 28
+    compileSdkVersion rootProject.ext.compileSdkVersion
     defaultConfig {
         applicationId "com.example.app"
-        minSdkVersion 21
-        targetSdkVersion 28
+        minSdkVersion rootProject.ext.minSdkVersion
+        targetSdkVersion rootProject.ext.targetSdkVersion
         versionCode 1
         versionName "1.0"
         testInstrumentationRunner "androidx.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner"

 dependencies {
     implementation fileTree(include: ['*.jar'], dir: 'libs')
-    implementation 'androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.0.0'
+    implementation "androidx.appcompat:appcompat:$androidxAppCompatVersion"
     implementation project(':capacitor-android')
-    testImplementation 'junit:junit:4.12'
-    androidTestImplementation 'androidx.test.ext:junit:1.1.1'
-    androidTestImplementation 'androidx.test.espresso:espresso-core:3.1.0'
+    testImplementation "junit:junit:$junitVersion"
+    androidTestImplementation "androidx.test.ext:junit:$androidxJunitVersion"
+    androidTestImplementation "androidx.test.espresso:espresso-core:$androidxEspressoCoreVersion"
     implementation project(':capacitor-cordova-android-plugins')

Don’t miss the change from single quotes to double quotes. Double quotes are required for variable interpolation.

Android Studio plugin update recommended

When you open the Android project in Android Studio, a Plugin Update Recommended message will appear. Click on update. It will tell you to update Gradle plugin and Gradle. Click Update button.

You can also manually update the Gradle plugin and Gradle.

To manually update Gradle plugin, in android/build.gradle file, update the com.android.tool.build:gradle version to 3.6.1.

To manually update Gradle, in android/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties, change gradle-4.10.1-all.zip to gradle-5.6.4-all.zip.

Update Google Services plugin

In android/build.gradle file, update the com.google.gms:google-services dependency version to 4.3.3.

     dependencies {
         classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:4.1.1'
-        classpath 'com.google.gms:google-services:4.2.0'
+        classpath 'com.google.gms:google-services:4.3.3'

         // NOTE: Do not place your application dependencies here; they belong
         // in the individual module build.gradle files
     }

Change `android:configChanges` to avoid app restarts

In android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml, add |smallestScreenSize|screenLayout|uiMode in the activity’s android:configChanges attribute.

         <activity
-            android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden|keyboard|screenSize|locale"
+            android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden|keyboard|screenSize|locale|smallestScreenSize|screenLayout|uiMode"
             android:name="com.example.app"
             android:label="@string/title_activity_main"
             android:theme="@style/AppTheme.NoActionBarLaunch"
             android:launchMode="singleTask">

Add caches folder to `FileProvider` file paths to avoid permission error when editing gallery images

In android/app/src/main/res/xml/file_paths.xml add <cache-path name="my_cache_images" path="." />:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
 <paths xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
     <external-path name="my_images" path="." />
+    <cache-path name="my_cache_images" path="." />
 </paths>

Remove `launch_splash.xml`

The android/app/src/main/res/drawable/launch_splash.xml file can be removed because it is no longer used.

Remove maven repository

Capacitor is distributed on npm, so having the maven repository entry on android/app/build.gradle is no longer needed and can cause problems. Remove it from repositories section:

 repositories {
-    maven {
-        url "https://dl.bintray.com/ionic-team/capacitor"
-    }
     flatDir {
         dirs '../capacitor-cordova-android-plugins/src/main/libs', 'libs'
     }
 }

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