backbutton not working even after fix

[yehudaclinton]

├── @capacitor/android@7.4.2
├── @capacitor/app@7.0.1
├── @capacitor/core@7.4.2
I have a single page app using capacitor + webpack that navigates pages with window.pageStack.push(page)

and i tried the overriding the backbutton like:

import { App } from '@capacitor/app';
App.addListener('backButton', () => {
      if (confirm('Are you sure you want to exit the app?')) {
        App.exitApp();
      }

but it always exits on cancel or when canGoBack is true and window.history.back()

[MILLERMARRU]

I read through AppPlugin.java's actual back-button handling on Android (it moved to the capacitor-plugins monorepo, app/android/src/main/java/com/capacitorjs/plugins/app/AppPlugin.java) since the behavior you're describing doesn't match what the native code should be doing, and it's worth spelling out the exact contract:

this.onBackPressedCallback = new OnBackPressedCallback(!disableBackButtonHandler) {
  @Override
  public void handleOnBackPressed() {
    if (!hasListeners(EVENT_BACK_BUTTON)) {
      if (bridge.getWebView().canGoBack()) {
        bridge.getWebView().goBack();
      }
    } else {
      JSObject data = new JSObject();
      data.put("canGoBack", bridge.getWebView().canGoBack());
      notifyListeners(EVENT_BACK_BUTTON, data, true);
      bridge.triggerJSEvent("backbutton", "document");
    }
  }
};

The important part: this is registered as an OnBackPressedCallback on the activity's dispatcher, which consumes the back press entirely. Once you register even one backButton listener, the native side does nothing automatically, not even activity.finish(). There's no code path anywhere in this plugin that exits or navigates on its own once you have a listener, everything (exit, history.back(), whatever) is 100% delegated to your JS callback. So "it always exits" can't be the native side silently overriding your logic, it has to be coming from your own JS running the exitApp() branch when you don't expect it to.

I also checked BridgeWebChromeClient.onJsConfirm since that's the other place something unexpected could happen, and it's implemented correctly: OK calls result.confirm() (→ confirm() returns true), Cancel/dismiss calls result.cancel() (→ returns false). So a real Cancel tap should make your if (confirm(...)) false and skip exitApp() entirely, based on the code as posted.

Given that, the most likely explanation for "exits regardless of the dialog answer" is that the listener is getting registered more than once, if App.addListener('backButton', ...) runs again on every route change or component re-mount (common in SPA setups without a cleanup/remove() call on unmount), you'd get multiple confirm() dialogs stacked/queued, and dismissing the first one doesn't stop the second instance's logic from running and calling exitApp(). Worth checking whether that listener registration lives somewhere that re-runs (e.g. router guard, page component) rather than a true app-level singleton, and adding a .remove() on the returned handle if so.

For the canGoBack/history.back() half: the payload already gives you canGoBack on the event object passed into your listener (data.put("canGoBack", ...)), so you don't need to track it separately, read it straight off the callback argument:

App.addListener('backButton', (event) => {
  if (event.canGoBack) {
    window.history.back();
  } else if (confirm('Are you sure you want to exit the app?')) {
    App.exitApp();
  }
});

The snippet in your post cuts off right after App.exitApp(); with no else, if your real code is missing the canGoBack branch entirely, that alone would explain why back navigation "doesn't work" separately from the exit issue.

[yehudaclinton]

Thank you but we switched to a single page react app instead because of this. I'm not sure if I will get around testing your solutions.