Live updates for Ionic apps with Capacitor and OtaKit

Ionic apps run on Capacitor, which means they can update over the air — ship a bug fix or a new screen straight to installed devices without a store review. Ionic's own answer is Appflow Live Updates, but it's bundled into a broader paid platform. If you just want live updates for your Ionic app, OtaKit does exactly that, for a fraction of the cost.

This guide adds live updates to an Ionic app — Angular, React, or Vue — with OtaKit.

Confirm your Capacitor setup

Modern Ionic projects already use Capacitor. Check that you have the native platforms and know your web output directory — it's www for Ionic Angular and dist for Ionic React/Vue:

ionic build            # produces www/ (Angular) or dist/ (React/Vue)
npx cap sync

If you're still on Cordova, migrate to Capacitor first — it's the supported path and unlocks the modern plugin ecosystem.

Install OtaKit

npm install @otakit/capacitor-updater
npx cap sync

// capacitor.config.ts
import type { CapacitorConfig } from "@capacitor/cli";

const config: CapacitorConfig = {
  appId: "com.example.myapp",
  appName: "My App",
  webDir: "www", // or "dist" for Ionic React/Vue
  plugins: {
    OtaKit: { appId: "YOUR_OTAKIT_APP_ID" },
  },
};

export default config;

Signal a successful boot

Call notifyAppReady() once your app has loaded so OtaKit can roll back a broken release automatically. In Ionic Angular:

import { Component } from "@angular/core";
import { Capacitor } from "@capacitor/core";
import { OtaKit } from "@otakit/capacitor-updater";

@Component({ selector: "app-root", templateUrl: "app.component.html" })
export class AppComponent {
  constructor() {
    if (Capacitor.isNativePlatform()) OtaKit.notifyAppReady();
  }
}

In Ionic React or Vue, place the same call in your root component's mount effect.

Release your first live update

npm install -g @otakit/cli
otakit login

ionic build
otakit upload --release

Publish the app to the stores once with the plugin configured. After that, every otakit upload --release reaches installed devices on their next launch. Bundles are signed, hash-verified, CDN-delivered, and optionally end-to-end encrypted — with no monthly-active-user or bandwidth metering.

Why teams move off Appflow for this

• Pricing. Appflow is a platform subscription; OtaKit doesn't meter MAUs or bandwidth, so most apps pay $0–25/mo.
• No lock-in. OtaKit's stack is open source and self-hostable.
• Same capability. Signed, rollback-safe live updates with channels and runtime versions.

Where to go next

Read staged rollouts to ship safely, and how OTA works for the full delivery model.