Announcing Apache Cordova Retirement in App Center

Jihye Eom

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. 🤖❤️📱

31 comments

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  • Charlie Law 0

    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

  • Ubookr Mobile 0

    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?

    • Emir TB 0

      Is time for flutter

    • Charles Blundell 0

      Hey Ubookr Mobile, i’m trying to get a few people together to discuss an alternative / way forward: https://github.com/IllusionVK/ReplaceAppCenter

  • Byron Igoe 1

    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.

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