Generating installers using the Cordova CLI

Now we are going to generate installers for Android and iOS using the Cordova CLI.

Android installer

First we are going to take a look at generating an installer for Android using the Cordova CLI. You can perform the following steps:

1. Open a new terminal/prompt at the root of the project.

2. Remove unwanted plugins:

   ionic plugin rm cordova-plugin-console
   

3. Build the app in release mode:

   cordova build --release android
   

   This will generate an unsigned installer in release mode and place it at /platforms/android/build/outputs/apk/android-release-unsigned.apk.

4. Next, we need to create a signing key. If you already have a signing key or you are updating an existing app, you can continue to Step 6.

5. The private key is generated using the key tool. We will create a folder named deploy-keys and then save all these keys there. Once the folder is created, using the cd command, go to the folder and run this:

   keytool -genkey -v -keystore app-name-release-key.keystore -alias...