Limits of Capacitor native updates for Ionic upgrades

Direct answer

Capacitor's update workflow modifies generated native project files—build configuration, dependency manifests, and Capacitor bridge or plugin registration scaffolding—under android/ and ios/. Custom Kotlin, Swift, Java, and Objective-C source placed directly in those directories is treated as project-owned and is not managed, overwritten, or explicitly preserved by the automated migration.

Separating generated changes from custom code

There is no separate manifest of generated files. The supported mechanism for identifying what changed is to commit a clean pre-migration baseline and inspect the version-control diff produced by the update command. The tool does not annotate or tag changed files.

Version-control baseline and recovery

A clean, committed baseline of both android/ and ios/ is required before running the migration. Uncommitted changes are at risk during a rollback. If the migration fails, git reset --hard to the pre-update commit restores the native projects without discarding local modifications.

Steps for this case

1. Run git status and commit all pending changes in android/ and ios/.
2. Execute the documented Capacitor update command for your target version.
3. Review the diff with git diff --stat and git diff.
4. Confirm custom source files and resources do not appear in the diff unless intentionally changed.
5. If migration fails, run git reset --hard to the pre-update commit, then consult the version-specific migration guide before retrying.

Version boundary

The exact file categories touched are version-sensitive and vary by Capacitor major release. The matching official migration guide for the target Ionic and Capacitor versions is the authoritative boundary. Providing the exact target versions would let me point to the specific guide and file list.