That is the version number of the Ionic CLI, which is different from the version number of Ionic's library. Here are a couple easy ways to check the version.
In the browser console, you can run ionic.version and it will print to the console what version it is.
If your CLI is old enough, it will say "info is not a valid task" and you can use this:
$ ionic lib
Local Ionic version: 1.0.1 (C:\stuff\july21app\www\lib\ionic\version.json)
Latest Ionic version: 1.0.1 (released 2015-06-30)
* Local version up to date
Ionic projects structure are similar as Angular projects, you can get use
ionic info
command to Print project, system, and environment information.
This command is an easy way to share information about your setup. If applicable, be sure to run ionic info within your project directory to display even more information.
We may use --json after ionic info to print system/environment info in JSON format
You can find the library version accessing the file package.json. Under dependencies, check the property ionic-angular.
You can also check the Ionic CLI version typing ionic info in the terminal from your project's folder.
Ionic CLI update available: 5.4.16 → 6.2.2
The package name has changed from ionic to @ionic/cli!
To update, run: npm uninstall -g ionic
Then run: npm i -g @ionic/cli