The Ionic React conference app is a component catalogue in costume

What kind of project this is

The README is explicit about the intent. It calls this a kitchen-sink demo application built with Ionic Framework and React, demonstrating a wide range of Ionic components and features in the context of a fictional tech conference app, and it adds a note that there is no actual Ionic Conference and that the project is purely for demonstration purposes. That framing matters for how you use it. The value is not the conference. The value is that every screen is an excuse to show a component working in a layout with real spacing, real data shapes and real navigation, which is a different thing from reading the component documentation. The fictional framing is also what makes it safe to copy wholesale: there is no real user data, no real schedule and no real conference to worry about. A live demo is linked, along with a tutorial path into it.

The three-framework split, and why the React one differs

The same application exists in three framework versions. There is an Ionic Angular conference app and an Ionic Vue conference app, and this is the React one. That is a genuinely useful thing about the repository, because the same product built three times is a way to see what a framework's idioms look like against identical requirements. The React version is the one with @ionic/react and @ionic/react-router at version 9, React and react-dom at 19.2.7, react-router and react-router-dom at 6.30.4, and react-redux with reselect for state. The Angular version would use a different router and a different state library, and the Vue version a third. If you are choosing a framework for a project like this, running the same app three times is a more honest comparison than reading three tutorials, because the differences you see are the framework differences rather than the domain differences.

The features the demo actually covers

The feature list describes what the app exercises. You can browse a conference schedule with filtering, view speaker bios and session details, handle user authentication and profile management, use interactive maps for venue navigation, support push notifications, toggle between dark and light mode, and run on iOS, Android and the web. Those are not arbitrary: they are the components that a team building a real application on Ionic is most likely to need, and the schedule, the speaker and the map are the three screens where a component library either works or does not. The map in particular is where the web and native targets diverge, since Leaflet is a web mapping library and react-leaflet wraps it. The state layer is the other place the framework shows its seams, with Redux and reselect giving a predictable data flow across screens.

Running it locally

The setup is the standard Ionic workflow. You need Node.js, with the LTS version recommended, and npm comes with it, and the Ionic CLI is installed globally:

npm install -g ionic

Then you clone the repository, move into the project directory, install the dependencies and start the dev server:

git clone https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic-react-conference-app.git

cd ionic-react-conference-app

npm install

ionic serve

and the app comes up on http://localhost:3000/. The package.json explains the script aliases, since dev and ionic:serve are both vite and start delegates to dev, while ionic:build and build are both tsc followed by vite build, which means the type check runs as part of a production build rather than as a separate step you might forget. A preview script serves the built output and a format script runs Prettier across the source tree. The browserslist field in the same file targets a wide browser set, excluding Internet Explorer 11 and the dead and op_mini all buckets.

Native and deployment targets in the tree

The repository carries the configuration for every target the framework can produce, and that is what makes it a useful reference beyond the browser. There is an android/ directory and an ios/ directory, which are the native projects Capacitor generates, and a capacitor.config.json to configure them. The Capacitor dependencies are all at version 8, covering core, android, ios, preferences and the splash screen, which tells you the app uses native storage and a native splash rather than only web storage. On the hosting side there is a vercel.json and a .netlify/ directory for two static hosts, a firebase.json with a .firebaserc for Firebase, and index.html plus a public/ directory as the Vite entry points. The build itself is Vite 6 with the React plugin, and TypeScript 5.8 with a separate tsconfig.node.json for the tooling side of the project. A renovate.json in the root is the dependency update configuration, which is a small signal about how the project stays current on a large dependency list.

Where this demo is the wrong thing to build on

Three cases. The first is a team that wants an application, because the conference is fictional, the sessions and speakers are fixtures, and there is no back-end behind the authentication or the push notifications. Reading it as a starting point means replacing the data layer wholesale. The second is a project that does not want Ionic, because the whole value of the repository is the Ionic components, and a React team with its own design system gets nothing from it beyond the routing and state patterns. The third is a team that needs a supported dependency, since the repository publishes no releases and there is no version to pin, so what you copy is whatever is on the branch at the moment you clone. Against the official component documentation and the starter templates, the difference in approach is that this app shows components in combination, in a layout that a designer signed off on, which is something a component gallery or a single-component sandbox never shows you, and which is also why you should treat the result as a demonstration rather than a recommendation.

Editorial conclusion

ionic-react-conference-app is a good fit for a developer who wants to see how a particular Ionic React component behaves in a real layout, and for a team starting an Ionic React project who want a working build configuration to copy rather than to design. It is a poor fit if you want an application to build on, because the conference is fictional and the data is a fixture, and it is a poor fit if you need a maintained dependency, since renovate.json is present but the repository publishes no releases. Check three things before you adopt anything from it: that the component you care about is actually in the app, since it is a selected showcase rather than the full framework surface, that the versions line up with your own project, because the dependencies are on Ionic React 9, React 19, Capacitor 8 and React Router 6, and that you read the LICENSE file yourself, because the badge and the package metadata say MIT while the recorded licence field for the project is a custom one that GitHub cannot classify.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. ionic-team/ionic-react-conference-app on GitHub
2. Issues
3. Project website
4. README