I wasted 20 days debugging Capacitor SQLite — turns out it was basically dead

This one was painful.

I was integrating SQLite into my app (EchoId), and like most people in the Ionic/Capacitor ecosystem, I went with Capacitor SQLite. Seemed like the obvious choice.

Big mistake.

The problem

Nothing worked properly.

• random failures
• inconsistent behavior across devices
• methods not behaving as expected
• docs that didn’t match reality

At first, I assumed it was my fault. Misconfiguration, bad setup, something subtle.

So I did what every dev does:

• reinstalled everything
• rewrote integration multiple times
• tried different versions
• followed every tutorial I could find

Still broken.

The worst part

There was no clear information anywhere.

• Documentation was outdated
• GitHub issues were vague or unanswered
• StackOverflow had half-answers

Even AI tools (yes, including ChatGPT) kept suggesting:

“maybe try this”
“maybe it’s that”

Nothing concrete. Just guesses.

What was actually going on

After ~20 days of digging, I found the real issue:

👉 The plugin was effectively deprecated / not properly maintained at that time

Not clearly stated.
Not documented properly.
Just silently… unreliable.

That’s why nothing made sense.

The decision

At that point, I stopped trying to “fix” it.

Switched to:

👉 Cordova SQLite

Also, credit where it’s due — big respect to the original author (@jepiqueau) for the work and contributions.

Yeah, older.
Yeah, less “modern”.

But guess what?

It just works.

Result

• Stable database operations
• Predictable behavior
• No random failures
• No wasting days debugging ghosts

EchoId still uses it today — and it runs perfectly.

What I learned

• Don’t assume the popular option is stable
• If something feels fundamentally broken, it probably is
• Docs + ecosystem health matter more than “modern stack”
• Know when to stop debugging and switch tools

The plugin has since been moved to the Capgo organization, and from what I’ve seen it might be in a much better state now.

But back then? It was a black hole.

If you’re stuck in a loop where nothing makes sense — step back and question the tool itself.

Sometimes the bug isn’t in your code.

If you're building real-time or offline-first apps and have dealt with similar issues, I’d like to hear what you ended up using.