Since App Center launched in 2017, we’ve added support for 16 platforms and frameworks. One of the first was Apache Cordova, a cross-platform framework that wraps JavaScript apps in a native container. Along with React Native, it was one of two frameworks to support CodePush and exactly what the community needed as many developers transitioned their skills from web to mobile apps. Since then, the needs of the community have changed just as Cordova’s popularity has waned. Today calls from the Cordova SDK account for less than 1% of App Center’s service.
Consequently, after a 6 month grace period, App Center will discontinue support for Apache Cordova. Support for all other platforms remains unchanged.
- Effective immediately, App Center will no longer offer the option to create Apache Cordova apps through the portal, CLI or API.
- Starting April 1, 2022, the App Center service will no longer accept calls from the Cordova SDK. While the services may continue to work for a short period of time afterward, we do not guarantee interaction of services or availability in the App Center portal.
If you have an Apache Cordova app and need assistance evaluating other options, our team is more than happy to assist you via our support channel. Simply open a support ticket under the drop-down menu on the right top corner of the portal.
As always, we appreciate every developer who builds, tests, distributes, and monitors their app with App Center. Today, we also want to extend a very special thanks to every developer who built an Apache Cordova app with us. We hope you had as much fun as we did. 🤖❤️📱
I understand this is a business decision, so you can reassign development resources, cut support and hosting costs, etc.
May I kindly ask that you release the current version of your CodePush backend code? The Open Source community can maintain it, and we can host our own servers. This won’t cost you anything, and we members of the community would be very appreciative. Thanks.
FFS, this announcement will break thousands of apps using you service. Thanks for nothing Jihye 🙁 We are going to have to either find an alternative to your service (not Ionic’s ripoff pricing) or spend thousands of dollars re-writing out app because of this decision.
Does your post mean codepush will stop working for cordova apps, or just the analytics we don’t use?
Hey Ubookr Mobile, i’m trying to get a few people together to discuss an alternative / way forward: https://github.com/IllusionVK/ReplaceAppCenter
Is time for flutter
We only use App Center to host and distribute multiple version of our App to the test team ie. Dev, UAT, Pilot.
The App is pushed into App Center via CLI from our build pipeline.
The article states we can’t “create” apps.
Will we still be able to push in our existing Apps with the CLI and have access to our historical builds
It's a pity the title of this article says that Apache Cordova is retiring. It isn't. Microsoft support for it is, but there are alternatives.
Check out VoltBuilder. It handles the build and upload of iOS and Android jobs. In addition, it features hosting, an API for automatic submission and uses the latest Cordova tooling.
Also, check out VoltSigner, which is a free utility to create Android and iOS certificates securely on your local machine.
I'm on the...
This is NOT good news and overall my entire company is pretty shocked at this announcement. We depend on Codepush for our Cordova apps.
There is not a viable alternative now which is causing us lots of stress. Appflow, no matter what the Ionic team says, is NOT an alternative @ $499 per month.
Check out VoltBuilder. It handles the build and upload of iOS and Android jobs. In addition, it features hosting, an API for automatic submission and uses the latest Cordova tooling. The pricing is also more reasonable.
Also, check out VoltSigner, which is a free utility to create Android and iOS certificates securely on your local machine.
I’m on the dev team – feel free to send me questions!
I agree with this. The timing of Ionics mailer for AppFlow price increase to $499 is impeccable. I was considering migrating to AppCenter and CodePush from AppFlow when they announced the increase just for the soft update capabilities until I saw this post. Now I have no idea what I’m going to do…
I’m shocked at how disrespectfully Microsoft acted in announcing the discontinuation of Cordova support.
Firstly, not giving notice in advance of closing new applications, and also because of the short deadline for shutdown.
Especially in relation to CodePush, it took it out of the community only to discontinue it.
If anyone has an alternative please let us know 🙁
Hey Mauricio, we are trying to discuss with people here about this: forward https://github.com/IllusionVK/ReplaceAppCenter
Check out VoltBuilder. It handles the build and upload of iOS and Android jobs. In addition, it features hosting, an API for automatic submission and uses the latest Cordova tooling. The pricing is also more reasonable.
Does it also applied to Capacitor 2+ apps?
I have the same question
For teams looking for an alternative: Ionic’s Appflow service has full live update (remote code update) and native build support for Cordova and the modern Capacitor https://ionic.io/appflow
We are using it for our capacitor app, and capacitor is a growing platform. We use https://github.com/mapiacompany/capacitor-codepush, it will be really sad to not be able to use platform.
Hey Berkay, I have mentioned that plugin here: https://github.com/IllusionVK/ReplaceAppCenter if we could get our own CodePush server working well, then we may have an OSS alternative
You could consider sentry-capacitor