Ionic apps native or hybrid?

Ionic Framework ionic-v3
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I am reading Ionic docs and a question popped into my head.
I always thought that Ionic apps were hybrid, but the website says "Ionic is the beautiful, free and open source mobile SDK for developing native and progressive web apps with ease."
According to an article that I have been reading: “Don’t be mistaken by the name. Ionic Native is a new name for what used to be called ngCordova. It’s simply the new Ionic way to use existing Cordova and PhoneGap plugins. Ionic Native will not make your app native.”

So, are Ionic apps native or hybrid?

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Take a look at source code of Cordova plugins. They detect what platform they are running on and call different native functions depending on what they find. Ionic components are hybrid. Ionic Native wraps Cordova plugins, to provide some native functions inside a hybrid framework. If you want a fully native Angular framework, you should check out NativeScript.

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Ionic applications run in a WebView (essentially a glorified browser window), but are able to run on a device as a .APK, .IPA, and so on. This means they’re known as a hybrid application.

Here’s some reading on improving the performance of WebViews to match native performance where possible.