Cordova Plugins Overview

Cordova's core is deliberately small. It gives you a WebView and the machinery to bridge JavaScript calls to native code, but it does not ship with camera access, GPS, file access, or any other device feature baked in. Every one of those capabilities comes from a plugin that you add to your project explicitly. This page explains what a plugin actually is under the hood, how to manage plugins with the Cordova CLI, where to find them, and gives you a map of the native-device plugins this track covers next.

What a Plugin Actually Is

A Cordova plugin is really two matched halves glued together by the Cordova bridge:

When your JavaScript calls a plugin method, Cordova's bridge serializes that call, hands it to the matching native code, waits for the native side to do its (often asynchronous) work, and then routes the result back to your JavaScript success or error callback. You never write the native Java/Swift code yourself — you only consume the JavaScript API the plugin author wrote on top of it.

Installing a Plugin

Plugins are added from the project root using the Cordova CLI. Once added, the plugin's native code is automatically merged into every platform you've added (Android, iOS), and its JavaScript API becomes available globally in your app after deviceready fires.

cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-camera

You can also install a plugin from a specific version on npm, a local folder, or a git repository URL — useful when you need a fork or a version pinned for compatibility:

cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-camera@6.0.0
cordova plugin add ../my-local-plugin
cordova plugin add https://github.com/some-user/cordova-plugin-fork.git

Listing and Removing Plugins

It's easy to lose track of which plugins a project already has, especially once several native-device features are wired in. cordova plugin ls (or its longer alias cordova plugin list) prints every plugin currently installed, along with its version:

cordova plugin ls

Typical output looks like this — a plugin ID followed by its installed version:

cordova-plugin-camera 6.0.0 "Camera"
cordova-plugin-device 2.1.0 "Device"
cordova-plugin-geolocation 4.1.0 "Geolocation"

To remove a plugin you no longer need, use cordova plugin remove (or the shorter rm alias) followed by the plugin's ID exactly as it appears in the list above:

cordova plugin rm cordova-plugin-camera

Where to Find Plugins

Plugins are ordinary npm packages, so the same registry you'd search for any JavaScript package doubles as the plugin catalog. Two good starting points:

Core Plugins vs. Community Plugins

Not all plugins carry the same level of trust. It helps to think of them in two tiers:

The Native-Device Plugins This Track Covers

The next several lessons walk through the most commonly used core plugins in detail, one at a time. Here's the map of what's coming and why each one matters:

Always Wait for deviceready

Every plugin JavaScript API attaches itself to the global scope only after Cordova has fully initialized the native bridge — which is exactly what the deviceready event signals, covered in detail in the previous lesson. Calling a plugin method before that event fires is one of the single most common Cordova bugs: the function may not exist yet, or the native bridge may not be ready to service the call.

document.addEventListener('deviceready', onDeviceReady, false);

function onDeviceReady() {
    // Safe: deviceready has fired, every installed plugin's JS API is ready
    navigator.camera.getPicture(onSuccess, onError, { quality: 75 });
}

function onSuccess(imageData) {
    // Handle the captured image here
}

function onError(message) {
    console.log('Camera error: ' + message);
}