Cordova

Open-source mobile development framework that lets you build cross-platform apps with standard web technologies: HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Applications run inside native wrappers for each platform and use a unified JavaScript API to access device capabilities such as camera, geolocation, file storage, and network status without rewriting for each OS.

Hosted by the Apache Software Foundation, the framework has been a staple for web-to-native development for over a decade. Unlike React Native or Flutter, Cordova does not ship UI components or a framework layer: it provides only the runtime in which your web app executes and the plugin bridge to native APIs. This keeps the stack minimal and lets you pair it with any front-end framework: Angular, Vue, React, or vanilla JavaScript.

Key capabilities:

• Single codebase targeting Android, iOS, browser, and Electron
• Plugin-based access to device APIs: camera, geolocation, file system, media capture, vibration, battery status
• CLI-driven cross-platform workflow or platform-centered workflow for fine-grained control
• Support for offline scenarios and embedding in hybrid apps that mix WebView with native components
• Extensible plugin architecture for custom native bindings and third-party integrations via npm

Web developers use Cordova when they want to ship an existing web app to app stores without learning Swift or Kotlin. Teams extending an app across multiple platforms benefit from reusing web skills and tooling. Cordova also suits hybrid scenarios where a WebView sits inside a native app and needs to call device APIs. The CLI integrates with Node.js and npm, so adding plugins and building for platforms fits into standard JavaScript workflows.