Is there an open source alternative to Appflow for over-the-air updates of capacitor apps

codemaster138 · May 7, 2022, 12:05pm

I’m currently building an app with capacitor and I need to provide over-the-air updates, much like Appflow’s live updates feature.

I’ve looked around online, but it seems like the only alternatives are Microsoft AppCenter (formerly CodePush), which appears to have dropped support a while ago, and CapGo which is a paid service with a closed-source backend.

Is there any alternative that’s free & open source?

thomasvidas · May 11, 2022, 5:48pm

No, and that most likely won’t change since maintaining a project like that is expensive and complex. There’s a reason that AppFlow Live Updates are expensive as they are. And CapGo, while perfectly viable for smaller use cases, isn’t as robust as AppFlow’s offerings at the moment.

You can create your own live update service, we aren’t doing anything proprietary or have any special agreements with Apple/Google if you want to build out your own!

codemaster138 · May 13, 2022, 3:35pm

Okay, thanks for the info! Too bad, but you do have a point. In that case, I’ll probably have to build my own.

sethrevelle · June 13, 2022, 2:57am

CapGo appears to be open-source and have OTA update capacity, with a paid deployment server, and ability to host your own. It is also an awful lot cheaper, like 1-2 orders of magnitude.

codemaster138 · June 26, 2022, 6:39pm

I’ve checked out CapGo, but looking at their GitHub, it seems that only the capacitor plugin is open source and not the server.

joel36 · March 31, 2023, 5:01am

Hey @codemaster138 i did found the backend of CapGo :

github.com

Cap-go/capgo/blob/8a0d55e3f8e8e204e14ad57f9b22ebc1f8ca7680/supabase/functions/updates/index.ts

import { serve } from 'https://deno.land/std@0.179.0/http/server.ts'
import { cryptoRandomString } from 'https://deno.land/x/crypto_random_string@1.1.0/mod.ts'
import * as semver from 'https://deno.land/x/semver@v1.4.1/mod.ts'
import { methodJson, sendRes } from '../_utils/utils.ts'
import { isAllowedAction, sendStats, supabaseAdmin, updateOrCreateDevice } from '../_utils/supabase.ts'
import { checkPlan } from '../_utils/plans.ts'
import type { AppInfos, BaseHeaders } from '../_utils/types.ts'
import type { Database } from '../_utils/supabase.types.ts'
import { sendNotif } from '../_utils/notifications.ts'
import { getBundleUrl } from '../_utils/downloadUrl.ts'
import { appIdToUrl } from './../_utils/conversion.ts'

const resToVersion = (plugin_version: string, signedURL: string, version: Database['public']['Tables']['app_versions']['Row']) => {
  const res: any = {
    version: version.name,
    url: signedURL,
  }
  if (semver.gte(plugin_version, '4.13.0'))
    res.session_key = version.session_key || ''
  if (semver.gte(plugin_version, '4.4.0'))

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There also a doc for self host

I did it for my app, pretty easy, sadly i cannot affort appFlow pricing or CapGo pricing for my new project.