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appium / appium-uiautomator2-driver

Appium driver for Android UIAutomator2
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android appium driver uiautomator2

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Appium UiAutomator2 Driver

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Appium UiAutomator2 Driver is a test automation framework for Android devices. Appium UiAutomator2 Driver automates native, hybrid and mobile web apps, tested on emulators and real devices. Appium UiAutomator2 Driver is part of the Appium mobile test automation tool. The driver operates in scope of W3C WebDriver protocol with several custom extensions to cover operating-system specific scenarios.

UiAutomator2 Driver proxies most of the commands to UiAutomator2 server, which uses Google's UiAutomator framework under the hood. Some commands are proxied directly to appium-adb and other helpers built on top of Android platform tools.

Note

Since version 2.0.0 UiAutomator2 driver has dropped the support of Appium 1, and is only compatible to Appium 2. Use the appium driver install uiautomator2 command to add it to your Appium 2 dist.

Requirements

On top of standard Appium requirements UiAutomator2 driver also expects the following prerequisites:

Doctor

Since driver version 2.39.0 you can automate the validation for the most of the above requirements as well as various optional ones needed by driver extensions by running the appium driver doctor uiautomator2 server command.

Capabilities

General

Capability Name Description
platformName Could be set to android. Appium itself is not strict about this capability value if automationName is provided, so feel free to assign it to any supported platform name if this is needed, for example, to make Selenium Grid working.
appium:automationName Must always be set to uiautomator2. Values of automationName are compared case-insensitively.
appium:deviceName The name of the device under test (actually, it is not used to select a device under test). Consider setting udid for real devices and avd for emulators instead
appium:platformVersion The platform version of an emulator or a real device. This capability is used for device autodetection if udid is not provided
appium:udid UDID of the device to be tested. Could be retrieved from adb devices -l output. If unset then the driver will try to use the first connected device. Always set this capability if you run parallel tests.
appium:noReset Prevents the device to be reset before the session startup if set to true. This means that the application under test is not going to be terminated neither its data cleaned. false by default
appium:fullReset Being set to true always enforces the application under test to be fully uninstalled before starting a new session. false by default
appium:printPageSourceOnFindFailure Enforces the server to dump the actual XML page source into the log if any error happens. false by default.

Driver/Server

Capability Name Description
appium:systemPort The number of the port on the host machine used for the UiAutomator2 server. By default the first free port from 8200..8299 range is selected. It is recommended to set this value if you are running parallel tests on the same machine.
appium:skipServerInstallation Skip the UiAutomator2 Server component installation on the device under test and all the related checks if set to true. This could help to speed up the session startup if you know for sure the correct server version is installed on the device. In case the server is not installed or an incorrect version of it is installed then you may get an unexpected error later. false by default
appium:uiautomator2ServerLaunchTimeout The maximum number of milliseconds to wait util UiAutomator2Server is listening on the device. 30000 ms by default
appium:uiautomator2ServerInstallTimeout The maximum number of milliseconds to wait util UiAutomator2Server is installed on the device. 20000 ms by default
appium:uiautomator2ServerReadTimeout The maximum number of milliseconds to wait for a HTTP response from UiAutomator2Server. Only values greater than zero are accepted. If the given value is too low then expect driver commands to fail with timeout of Xms exceeded error. 240000 ms by default
appium:disableWindowAnimation Whether to disable window animations when starting the instrumentation process. The animation scale will be restored automatically after the instrumentation process ends for API level 26 and higher. The animation scale could remain if the session ends unexpectedly for API level 25 and lower. false by default
appium:skipDeviceInitialization If set to true then device startup checks (whether it is ready and whether Settings app is installed) will be canceled on session creation. Could speed up the session creation if you know what you are doing. false by default

App

Capability Name Description
appium:app Full path to the application to be tested (the app must be located on the same machine where the server is running). Both .apk and .apks application extensions are supported. Could also be an URL to a remote location. If neither of the app, appPackage or browserName capabilities are provided then the driver starts from the Dashboard and expects the test knows what to do next. Do not provide both app and browserName capabilities at once.
browserName The name of the browser to run the test on. If this capability is provided then the driver will try to start the test in Web context mode (Native mode is applied by default). Read Automating hybrid apps for more details. Usually equals to chrome.
appium:appPackage Application package identifier to be started. If not provided then UiAutomator2 will try to detect it automatically from the package provided by the app capability. Read How To Troubleshoot Activities Startup for more details
appium:appActivity Main application activity identifier. If not provided then UiAutomator2 will try to detect it automatically from the package provided by the app capability. Read How To Troubleshoot Activities Startup for more details
appium:appWaitActivity Identifier of the first activity that the application invokes. If not provided then equals to appium:appActivity. Read How To Troubleshoot Activities Startup for more details
appium:appWaitPackage Identifier of the first package that is invoked first. If not provided then equals to appium:appPackage. Read How To Troubleshoot Activities Startup for more details
appium:appWaitDuration Maximum amount of milliseconds to wait until the application under test is started (e. g. an activity returns the control to the caller). 20000 ms by default. Read How To Troubleshoot Activities Startup for more details
appium:androidInstallTimeout Maximum amount of milliseconds to wait until the application under test is installed. 90000 ms by default
appium:appWaitForLaunch Whether to block until the app under test returns the control to the caller after its activity has been started by Activity Manager (true, the default value) or to continue the test without waiting for that (false).
appium:intentCategory Set an optional intent category to be applied when starting the given appActivity by Activity Manager. Defaults to android.intent.category.LAUNCHER. Please use mobile:startActivity in case you don't set an explicit value.
appium:intentAction Set an optional intent action to be applied when starting the given appActivity by Activity Manager. Dfaults to android.intent.action.MAIN. Please use mobile:startActivity in case you don't set an explicit value.
appium:intentFlags Set an optional intent flags to be applied when starting the given appActivity by Activity Manager. Defaults to 0x10200000 (FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK FLAG_ACTIVITY_RESET_TASK_IF_NEEDED flags). Please use mobile:startActivity in case you don't set an explicit value.
appium:optionalIntentArguments Set an optional intent arguments to be applied when starting the given appActivity by Activity Manager
appium:dontStopAppOnReset Set it to true if you don't want the application to be restarted if it was already running. If appium:noReset is falsy, then the app under test is going to be restarted if either this capability is falsy (the default behavior) or appium:forceAppLaunch is set to true. false by default
appium:forceAppLaunch Set it to true if you want the application under test to be always forcefully restarted on session startup even if appium:noReset is true, and the app was already running. If noReset is falsy, then the app under test is going to be restarted if either this capability set to true or appium:dontStopAppOnReset is falsy (the default behavior). false by default. Available since driver version 2.12
appium:shouldTerminateApp Set it to true if you want the application under test to be always terminated on session end even if appium:noReset is true. If noReset is falsy, then the app under test is going to be terminated if appium:dontStopAppOnReset is also falsy (the default behavior). false by default
appium:autoLaunch Whether to launch the application under test automatically (true, the default value) after a test starts
appium:autoGrantPermissions Whether to grant all the requested application permissions automatically when a test starts(true). The targetSdkVersion in the application manifest must be greater or equal to 23 and the Android version on the device under test must be greater or equal to Android 6 (API level 23) to grant permissions. Applications whose targetSdkVersion is lower than or equal to 22 must be reinstalled to grant permissions, for example, by setting the appium:fullReset capability as true for Android 6+ devices. If your app needs some special security permissions, like access to notifications or media recording, consider using mobile: changePermissions extension with appops target. false by default
appium:otherApps Allows to set one or more comma-separated paths to Android packages that are going to be installed along with the main application under test. This might be useful if the tested app has dependencies
appium:uninstallOtherPackages Allows to set one or more comma-separated package identifiers to be uninstalled from the device before a test starts
appium:allowTestPackages If set to true then it would be possible to use packages built with the test flag for the automated testing (literally adds -t flag to the adb install command). false by default
appium:remoteAppsCacheLimit Sets the maximum amount of application packages to be cached on the device under test. This is needed for devices that don't support streamed installs (Android 7 and below), because ADB must push app packages to the device first in order to install them, which takes some time. Setting this capability to zero disables apps caching. 10 by default.
appium:enforceAppInstall If set to true then the application under test is always reinstalled even if a newer version of it already exists on the device under test. This capability has no effect if appium:noReset is set to true. false by default

App Localization

Capability Name Description
appium:localeScript Canonical name of the locale to be set for the app under test, for example Hans in zh-Hans-CN. See https://developer.android.com/reference/java/util/Locale.html for more details.
appium:language Name of the language to extract application strings for. Strings are extracted for the current system language by default. Also sets the language for the app under test. See https://developer.android.com/reference/java/util/Locale.html for more details. If language is provided then locale is also required to be set. The combination of both capability values must be a known locale and should be present in the list of available locales returned by the ICU's getAvailableULocales() method. The full list of supported locales is also dumped into the logcat output on failure. Example: en, ja
appium:locale Sets the locale for the app under test. See https://developer.android.com/reference/java/util/Locale.html for more details. If locale is provided then language is also required to be set. The combination of both capability values must be a known locale and should be present in the list of available locales returned by the ICU's getAvailableULocales() method. The full list of supported locales is also dumped into the logcat output on failure. Example: US, JP

ADB

Capability Name Description
appium:adbPort Number of the port on the host machine where ADB is running. 5037 by default
appium:remoteAdbHost Address of the host where ADB is running (the value of -H ADB command line option). Unset by default
appium:adbExecTimeout Maximum number of milliseconds to wait until single ADB command is executed. 20000 ms by default
appium:clearDeviceLogsOnStart If set to true then UiAutomator2 deletes all the existing logs in the device buffer before starting a new test
appium:buildToolsVersion The version of Android build tools to use. By default UiAutomator2 driver uses the most recent version of build tools installed on the machine, but sometimes it might be necessary to give it a hint (let say if there is a known bug in the most recent tools version). Example: 28.0.3
appium:skipLogcatCapture Being set to true disables automatic logcat output collection during the test run. false by default
appium:suppressKillServer Being set to true prevents the driver from ever killing the ADB server explicitly. Could be useful if ADB is connected wirelessly. false by default
appium:ignoreHiddenApiPolicyError Being set to true ignores a failure while changing hidden API access policies to enable access to non-SDK interfaces. Could be useful on some devices, where access to these policies has been locked by its vendor. false by default.
appium:hideKeyboard Being set to true hides the on-screen keyboard while the session is running. Use it instead of the legacy appium:unicodeKeyboard one (which will be dropped in the future). This effect is achieved by assigning a custom "artificial" input method. Only use this feature for special/exploratory cases as it violates the way your application under test is normally interacted with by a human. Setting this capability explicitly to false enforces adb shell ime reset call on session startup, which resets the currently selected/enabled IMEs to the default ones as if the device is initially booted with the current locale. undefined by default.
appium:mockLocationApp Sets the package identifier of the app, which is used as a system mock location provider since Appium 1.18.0+. This capability has no effect on emulators. If the value is set to null or an empty string, then the driver will reset the mocked location provider, e.g. the location won't be mocked anymore. Defaults to Appium Setting package identifier (io.appium.settings). Termination of a mock location provider application resets the mocked location data.
appium:logcatFormat The log print format, where format is one of: brief process tag thread raw time threadtime long. threadtime is the default value.
appium:logcatFilterSpecs Series of tag[:priority] where tag is a log component tag (or for all) and priority is: V Verbose, D Debug, I Info, W Warn, E Error, F Fatal, S Silent (supress all output). '' means ':d' and tag by itself means tag:v. If not specified on the commandline, filterspec is set from ANDROID_LOG_TAGS. If no filterspec is found, filter defaults to ':I'.
appium:allowDelayAdb Being set to false prevents emulator to use -delay-adb feature to detect its startup. See https://github.com/appium/appium/issues/14773 for more details.

Emulator (Android Virtual Device)

Capability Name Description
appium:avd The name of Android emulator to run the test on. The names of currently installed emulators could be listed using avdmanager list avd command. If the emulator with the given name is not running then it is going to be launched on automated session startup.
appium:avdLaunchTimeout Maximum number of milliseconds to wait until Android Emulator is started. 60000 ms by default
appium:avdReadyTimeout Maximum number of milliseconds to wait until Android Emulator is fully booted and is ready for usage. 60000 ms by default
appium:avdArgs Either a string or an array of emulator command line arguments. If arguments contain the -wipe-data one then the emulator is going to be killed on automated session startup in order to wipe its data.
appium:avdEnv Mapping of emulator environment variables.
appium:networkSpeed Sets the desired network speed limit for the emulator. It is only applied if the emulator is not running before the test starts. See emulator command line arguments description for more details.
appium:gpsEnabled Sets whether to enable (true) or disable (false) GPS service in the Emulator. Unset by default, which means to not change the current value
appium:isHeadless If set to true then emulator starts in headless mode (e.g. no UI is shown). It is only applied if the emulator is not running before the test starts. false by default.
appium:injectedImageProperties Allows adjusting of injected image properties, like size, position or rotation. The image itself is expected to be injected by mobile: injectEmulatorCameraImage extension. It is also mandatory to provide this capability if you are going to use the injection feature on a newly created/resetted emulator as it enforces emulator restart, so it could properly reload the modified image properties. The value itself is a map, where possible keys are size, position and rotation. All of them are optional. If any of values is not provided then the following defaults are used: {size: {scaleX: 1, scaleY: 1}, position: {x: 0, y: 0, z: -1.5}, rotation: {x: 0, y: 0, z: 0}}. The size value contains scale multipliers for X and Y axes. The position contains normalized coefficients for X/Y/Z axes, where 0 means it should be centered in the viewport. Values in the rotation are measured in degrees respectively for X, Y and Z axis. The capability is available since the driver version 3.6.0.

App Signing

Capability Name Description
appium:useKeystore Whether to use a custom keystore to sign the app under test. false by default, which means apps are always signed with the default Appium debug certificate (unless canceled by noSign capability). This capability is used in combination with keystorePath, keystorePassword, keyAlias and keyPassword capabilities.
appium:keystorePath The full path to the keystore file on the server filesystem. This capability is used in combination with useKeystore, keystorePath, keystorePassword, keyAlias and keyPassword capabilities. Unset by default
appium:keystorePassword The password to the keystore file provided in keystorePath capability. This capability is used in combination with useKeystore, keystorePath, keystorePassword, keyAlias and keyPassword capabilities. Unset by default
appium:keyAlias The alias of the key in the keystore file provided in keystorePath capability. This capability is used in combination with useKeystore, keystorePath, keystorePassword, keyAlias and keyPassword capabilities. Unset by default
appium:keyPassword The password of the key in the keystore file provided in keystorePath capability. This capability is used in combination with useKeystore, keystorePath, keystorePassword, keyAlias and keyPassword capabilities. Unset by default
appium:noSign Set it to true in order to skip application signing. By default all apps are always signed with the default Appium debug signature if they don't have any. This capability cancels all the signing checks and makes the driver to use the application package as is. This capability does not affect .apks packages as these are expected to be already signed.

Device Locking

Capability Name Description
appium:skipUnlock Whether to skip the check for lock screen presence (true). The default driver behaviour is to verify the presence of the screen lock (e.g. 'false' value of the capability) before starting the test and to unlock that (which sometimes might be unstable). Note, that this operation takes some time, so it is highly recommended to set this capability to true and disable screen locking on device(s) under test. Read the Unlock tutorial for more details.
appium:unlockType Set one of the possible types of Android lock screens to unlock. Read the Unlock tutorial for more details.
appium:unlockKey Allows to set an unlock key. Read the Unlock tutorial for more details.
appium:unlockStrategy Either 'locksettings' (default) or 'uiautomator'. Read the Unlock tutorial for more details.
appium:unlockSuccessTimeout Maximum number of milliseconds to wait until the device is unlocked. 2000 ms by default. Read the Unlock tutorial for more details.

MJPEG

Capability Name Description
appium:mjpegServerPort The number of the port on the host machine that UiAutomator2 server starts the MJPEG server on. If not provided then the screenshots broadcasting service on the remote device does not get exposed to a local port (e.g. no adb port forwarding is happening)
appium:mjpegScreenshotUrl The URL of a service that provides realtime device screenshots in MJPEG format. If provided then the actual command to retrieve a screenshot will be requesting pictures from this service rather than directly from the server

Web Context

Capability Name Description
appium:autoWebview If set to true then UiAutomator2 driver will try to switch to the web view with name WEBVIEW_ + appium:appPackage after the session is started. For example, if appium:appPackage capability is set to com.mypackage then WEBVIEW_com.mypackage will be used. false by default.
appium:autoWebviewName Set the name of webview context in which UiAutomator2 driver will try to switch if autoWebview capability is set to true (available since driver version 2.9.1). Has priority over using the appium:appPackage value in webview name. For example, if appium:autoWebviewName capability is set to myWebviewName then WEBVIEW_myWebviewName will be used. Unset by default.
appium:autoWebviewTimeout Set the maximum number of milliseconds to wait until a web view is available if autoWebview capability is set to true. 2000 ms by default.
appium:webviewDevtoolsPort The local port number to use for devtools communication. By default the first free port from 10900..11000 range is selected. Consider setting the custom value if you are running parallel tests.
appium:ensureWebviewsHavePages Whether to skip web views that have no pages from being shown in getContexts output. The driver uses devtools connection to retrieve the information about existing pages. true by default since Appium 1.19.0, false if lower than 1.19.0.
appium:enableWebviewDetailsCollection Whether to retrieve extended web views information using devtools protocol. Enabling this capability helps to detect the necessary chromedriver version more precisely. true by default since Appium 1.22.0, false if lower than 1.22.0.
appium:chromedriverPort The port number to use for Chromedriver communication. Any free port number is selected by default if unset.
appium:chromedriverPorts Array of possible port numbers to assign for Chromedriver communication. If none of the port in this array is free then an error is thrown.
appium:chromedriverArgs Array of chromedriver command line arguments. Note, that not all command line arguments that are available for the desktop browser are also available for the mobile one.
appium:chromedriverExecutable Full path to the chromedriver executable on the server file system.
appium:chromedriverExecutableDir Full path to the folder where chromedriver executables are located. This folder is used then to store the downloaded chromedriver executables if automatic download is enabled. Read Automatic Chromedriver Discovery article for more details.
appium:chromedriverChromeMappingFile Full path to the chromedrivers mapping file. This file is used to statically map webview/browser versions to the chromedriver versions that are capable of automating them. Read Automatic Chromedriver Discovery article for more details.
appium:chromedriverUseSystemExecutable Set it to true in order to enforce the usage of chromedriver, which gets downloaded by Appium automatically upon installation. This driver might not be compatible with the destination browser or a web view. false by default.
appium:chromedriverDisableBuildCheck Being set to true disables the compatibility validation between the current chromedriver and the destination browser/web view. Use it with care.
appium:recreateChromeDriverSessions If this capability is set to true then chromedriver session is always going to be killed and then recreated instead of just suspending it on context switching. false by default
appium:nativeWebScreenshot Whether to use screenshoting endpoint provided by UiAutomator framework (true) rather than the one provided by chromedriver (false, the default value). Use it when you experience issues with the latter.
appium:extractChromeAndroidPackageFromContextName If set to true, tell chromedriver to attach to the android package we have associated with the context name, rather than the package of the application under test. false by default.
appium:showChromedriverLog If set to true then all the output from chromedriver binary will be forwarded to the Appium server log. false by default.
pageLoadStrategy One of the available page load strategies. See https://www.w3.org/TR/webdriver/#capabilities
appium:chromeOptions A mapping, that allows to customize chromedriver options. See https://chromedriver.chromium.org/capabilities for the list of available entries.
appium:chromeLoggingPrefs Chrome logging preferences mapping. Basically the same as goog:loggingPrefs. It is set to {"browser": "ALL"} by default.

Other

Capability Name Description
appium:disableSuppressAccessibilityService Being set to true tells the instrumentation process to not suppress accessibility services during the automated test. This might be useful if your automated test needs these services. false by default
appium:userProfile Integer identifier of a user profile. By default the app under test is installed for the currently active user, but in case it is necessary to test how the app performs while being installed for a user profile, which is different from the current one, then this capability might come in handy.
appium:newCommandTimeout How long (in seconds) the driver should wait for a new command from the client before assuming the client has stopped sending requests. After the timeout the session is going to be deleted. 60 seconds by default. Setting it to zero disables the timer.
appium:skipLogcatCapture Skips to start capturing logs such as logcat. It might improve network performance. Log-related commands won't work if the capability is enabled. Defaults to false.
appium:timeZone Overrides the current device's time zone since the driver version 3.1.0. This change is preserved until the next override. The time zone identifier must be a valid name from the list of available time zone identifiers, for example Europe/Kyiv

Element Attributes

UiAutomator2 driver supports the following element attributes:

Name Description Example
checkable Whether the element is checkable or not 'true'
checked Whether the element is checked. Always false if the element is not checkable 'false'
class or className The full name of the element's class. Could be null for some elements 'android.view.View'
clickable Whether the element could be clicked 'false'
content-desc or contentDescription The content-description attribute of the accessible element 'foo'
enabled Whether the element could be clicked 'true'
focusable Whether the element could be focused 'true'
focused Whether the element could is focused. Always false if the element is not focusable 'false'
long-clickable or longClickable Whether the element accepts long clicks 'false'
package Identifier of the package the element belongs to 'com.mycompany'
password Whether the element is a password input field 'true'
resource-id or resourceId Element's resource identifier. Could be null 'com.mycompany:id/resId'
scrollable Whether the element is scrollable 'true'
selection-start Contains the index of the char where the selection starts. Could be null if the element provides no range info '5'
selection-end Contains the index of the char where the selection ends. Could be null if the element provides no range info '8'
selected Whether the element is selected 'false'
text or name The element's text. It never equals to null 'my text'
hint Element's hint text. On Android versions below Oreo it always equals to null. 'my hint text'
bounds The element's visible frame ([left, top][right, bottom]) [0,0][100,100]
displayed Whether the element is visible to the user 'true'
contentSize The dimensions of the element's content area {"left": 0, "top":0, "width": 100, "height": 100, "scrollableOffset": 10, "touchPadding": 0}
extras The result of [getExtras](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/accessibility/AccessibilityNodeInfo#getExtras()). The value includes all key-value pairs as key=value separated by a semicolon (;). If the value is empty, then only key part ending with the equal sign will be present. Part of extras in chrome browser:
AccessibilityNodeInfo.roleDescription=;
AccessibilityNodeInfo.chromeRole=rootWebArea;
ACTION_ARGUMENT_HTML_ELEMENT_STRING_VALUES=
ARTICLE,BLOCKQUOTE,BUTTON,CHECKBOX

Element Location

UiAutomator2 driver supports the following location strategies:

Name Description Speed Ranking Example
id This strategy is mapped to the native UiAutomator's By.res locator (exact match of element's resource name). Package identifier prefix is added automatically if unset and is equal to the identifier of the current application under test. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'com.mycompany:id/resourceId'
accessibilityId This strategy is mapped to the native UiAutomator's By.desc locator (exact match of element's content description). In applications written using ReactNative framework this attribute reflects the value of the accessibilityLabel property. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'my description'
className This strategy is mapped to the native UiAutomator's By.clazz locator (exact match of element's class). ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'android.view.View'
-android uiautomator This strategy is mapped to the native UiAutomator's UiSelector locator). It is even possible to perform some advanced operations, like scrolling, with this locator type. Check Guide on UiAutomator Locator Types ⭐⭐⭐⭐ new UiScrollable(new UiSelector().resourceId(\"android:id/list\")).scrollIntoView(new UiSelector().text(\"Radio Group\"))
xpath For elements lookup Xpath strategy the driver uses the same XML tree that is generated by page source API. Only Xpath 1.0 is supported for appium-uiatomator2-server versions below 4.25.0. All server versions starting from 4.25.0 support both Xpath 1.0 and 2.0 ⭐⭐⭐ By.xpath("//android.view.View[@text=\"Regular\" and @checkable=\"true\"]")

[!WARNING] Google is going to deprecate and remove UiCollection, UiObject, UiScrollable, and UiSelector support from the UiAutomator framework. This will render all -android uiautomator-based locators invalid, so please keep it in mind while using them or plan to use them in the future.

BiDi Protocol Support

UIAutomator2 driver has partial support of the BiDi Protocol since version 3.7.10. Check the Supported BiDi Commands And Events document for more details.

Parallel Tests

It is possible to execute tests in parallel using UiAutomator2 driver. Appium allows to do this on per-process (multiple server processes running on different ports managing single session) or per-request basis (single server process managing multiple sessions, more preferable, uses less resources and ensures better control over running sessions).

Note: If you are not going to run your tests in parallel then consider enabling the --session-override Appium server argument. It forces the server to close all pending sessions before a new one could be opened, which allows you to avoid possible issues with such sessions silently running/expiring in the background.

Important Real Device Capabilities

Important Emulator Capabilities

Settings API

UiAutomator2 driver supports Appium Settings API. Along with the common settings the following driver-specific settings are currently available:

Name Type Description
actionAcknowledgmentTimeout long Maximum number of milliseconds to wait for an acknowledgment of generic uiautomator actions, such as clicks, text setting, and menu presses. The acknowledgment is anAccessibilityEvent corresponding to an action, that lets the framework determine if the action was successful. Generally, this timeout should not be modified. 3000 ms by default
allowInvisibleElements boolean Whether to include elements that are not visible to the user (e. g. whose displayed attribute is false) to the XML source tree. false by default
ignoreUnimportantViews boolean Enables or disables layout hierarchy compression. If compression is enabled, the layout hierarchy derived from the Acessibility framework will only contain nodes that are important for uiautomator testing. Any unnecessary surrounding layout nodes that make viewing and searching the hierarchy inefficient are removed. false by default
elementResponseAttributes string Comma-separated list of element attribute names to be included into findElement response. By default only element UUID is present there, but it is also possible to add the following items: name, text, rect, enabled, displayed, selected, attribute/<element_attribute_name>. It is required that shouldUseCompactResponses setting is set to false in order for this one to apply.
enableMultiWindows boolean Whether to include all windows that the user can interact with (for example an on-screen keyboard) while building the XML page source (true). By default it is false and only the single active application window is included to the page source.
enableTopmostWindowFromActivePackage boolean Whether to limit the window with the highest Z-order from the active package for interactions and page source retrieval. By default it is false and the active application window, which may not necessarily have this order, is included to the page source.
enableNotificationListener boolean Whether to enable (true) toast notifications listener to listen for new toast notifications. By default this listener is enabled and UiAutomator2 server includes the text of toast messages to the generated XML page source, but not for longer than 3500 ms after the corresponding notification expires.
keyInjectionDelay long Delay in milliseconds between key presses when injecting text input. 0 ms by default
scrollAcknowledgmentTimeout long Timeout for waiting for an acknowledgement of an uiautomator scroll swipe action. The acknowledgment is an AccessibilityEvent, corresponding to the scroll action, that lets the framework determine if the scroll action was successful. Generally, this timeout should not be modified. 200 ms by default
shouldUseCompactResponses boolean Used in combination with elementResponseAttributes setting. If set to false then the findElement response is going to include the items enumerated in elementResponseAttributes setting. true by default
waitForIdleTimeout long Timeout used for waiting for the user interface to go into an idle state. By default, all core uiautomator objects except UiDevice will perform this wait before starting to search for the widget specified by the object's locator. Once the idle state is detected or the timeout elapses (whichever occurs first), the object will start to wait for the selector to find a match. Consider lowering the value of this setting if you experience long delays while interacting with accessibility elements in your test. 10000 ms by default.
waitForSelectorTimeout long Timeout for waiting for a widget to become visible in the user interface so that it can be matched by a selector. Because user interface content is dynamic, sometimes a widget may not be visible immediately and won't be detected by a selector. This timeout allows the uiautomator framework to wait for a match to be found, up until the timeout elapses. This timeout is only applied to android uiautomator location strategy. 10000 ms by default
normalizeTagNames boolean Being set to true applies unicode-to-ascii normalization of element class names used as tag names in the page source XML document. This is necessary if the application under test has some Unicode class names, which cannot be used as XML tag names by default due to known bugs in Android's XML DOM parser implementation. false by default
shutdownOnPowerDisconnect boolean Whether to shutdown the server if the device under test is disconnected from a power source (e. g. stays on battery power). true by default.
simpleBoundsCalculation boolean Whether to calculate element bounds as absolute values (true) or check if the element is covered by other elements and thus partially hidden (false, the default behaviour). Setting this setting to true helps to improve the performance of XML page source generation, but decreases bounds preciseness. Use with care.
trackScrollEvents boolean Whether to apply scroll events tracking (true, the default value), so the server could calculate the value of contentSize attribute. Having this setting enabled may add delays to all scrolling actions.
wakeLockTimeout long The timeout in milliseconds of wake lock that UiAutomator2 server acquires by default to prevent the device under test going to sleep while an automated test is running. By default the server acquires the lock for 24 hours. Setting this value to zero forces the server to release the wake lock.
serverPort int The number of the port on the remote device to start UiAutomator2 server on. Do not mix this with systemPort, which is acquired on the host machine. Must be in range 1024..65535. 6790 by default
mjpegServerPort int The number of the port on the remote device to start MJPEG screenshots broadcaster on. Must be in range 1024..65535. 7810 by default
mjpegServerFramerate int The maximum count of screenshots per second taken by the MJPEG screenshots broadcaster. Must be in range 1..60. 10 by default
mjpegScalingFactor int The percentage value used to apply downscaling on the screenshots generated by the MJPEG screenshots broadcaster. Must be in range 1..100. 50 is by default, which means that screenshots are downscaled to the half of their original size keeping their original proportions.
mjpegServerScreenshotQuality int The percentage value used to apply lossy JPEG compression on the screenshots generated by the MJPEG screenshots broadcaster. Must be in range 1..100. 50 is by default, which means that screenshots are compressed to the half of their original quality.
mjpegBilinearFiltering boolean Controls whether (true) or not (false, the default value) to apply bilinear filtering to MJPEG screenshots broadcaster resize algorithm. Enabling this flag may improve the quality of the resulting scaled bitmap, but may introduce a small performance hit.
useResourcesForOrientationDetection boolean Defines the strategy used by UiAutomator2 server to detect the original device orientation. By default (false value) the server uses device rotation value for this purpose. Although, this approach may not work for some devices and a portrait orientation may erroneously be detected as the landscape one (and vice versa). In such case it makes sense to play with this setting.
enforceXPath1 boolean Since UiAutomator2 driver version 4.25.0 XPath2 is set as the default and the recommended interpreter for the corresponding element locators. This interpreter is based on Psychopath XPath2 implementation, which is now a part of the Eclipse foundation. In most of the cases XPath1 locators are also valid XPath2 locators, so there should be no issues while locating elements. Although, since the XPath2 standard is much more advanced in comparison to the previous version, some issues are possible for more sophisticated locators, which cannot be fixed easily, as we depend on the third-party library mentioned above. Then try to workaround such issues by enforcing XPath1 usage (whose implementation is a part of the Android platform itself) and assigning this setting to true. Note, this setting is actually applied at the time when the element lookup by XPath is executed, so you could switch it on or off whenever needed throughout your automated testing session.
limitXPathContextScope boolean Due to historical reasons UiAutomator2 driver limits scopes of element context-based searches to the parent element. This means a request like findElement(By.xpath, "//root").findElement(By.xpath, "./..") would always fail, because the driver only collects descendants of the root element for the destination XML source. The limitXPathContextScope setting being set to false changes that default behavior, so the collected page source includes the whole page source XML where root node is set as the search context. With that setting disabled the search query above should not fail anymore. Although, you must still be careful while building XPath requests for context-based searches with the limitXPathContextScope setting set to false. A request like findElement(By.xpath, "//root").findElement(By.xpath, "//element") would ignore the current context and search for element trough the whole page source. Use . notation to correct that behavior and only find element nodes which are descendants of the root node: findElement(By.xpath, "//root").findElement(By.xpath, ".//element").
disableIdLocatorAutocompletion boolean According to internal Android standards it is expected that each resource identifier is prefixed with <packageName>:id/ string. This should guarantee uniqueness of each identifier. Although some application development frameworks ignore this rule and don't add such prefix automatically or, rather, let it up to the developer to decide how to represent their application identifiers. For example, testTag modifier attribute in the Jetpack Compose with [testTagsAsResourceId](https://developer.android.com/reference/kotlin/androidx/compose/ui/semantics/package-summary#(androidx.compose.ui.semantics.SemanticsPropertyReceiver).testTagsAsResourceId()) allows developers to set an arbitrary string without the prefix rule. Interoperability with UiAutomator also explains how to set it. By default UIA2 driver adds the above prefixes automatically to all resource id locators if they are not prefixed, but in case of such "special" apps this feature might be disabled by assigning the setting to true.
includeExtrasInPageSource boolean Whether to include extras element attribute in the XML page source result. Then, XPath locator can find the element by the extras. Its value consists of combined [getExtras](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/accessibility/AccessibilityNodeInfo#getExtras()) as keys=value pair separated by a semicolon (;), thus you may need to find the element with partial matching like contains e.g. driver.find_element :xpath, '//*[contains(@extras, "AccessibilityNodeInfo.roleDescription=")]'. The value could be huge if elements in the XML page source have large extras. It could affect the performance of XML page source generation.
snapshotMaxDepth int The number of maximum depth for the source tree snapshot. The default value is 70. This number should be in range [1, 500]. A part of the elements source tree might be lost if the value is too low. Also, StackOverflowError might be caused if the value is too high (Issues 12545, 12892). The available driver version is 2.27.0 or higher.

Platform-Specific Extensions

Beside of standard W3C APIs the driver provides the below custom command extensions to execute platform specific scenarios. Use the following source code examples in order to invoke them from your client code:

// Java 11+
var result = driver.executeScript("mobile: <methodName>", Map.ofEntries(
    Map.entry("arg1", "value1"),
    Map.entry("arg2", "value2")
    // you may add more pairs if needed or skip providing the map completely
    // if all arguments are defined as optional
));
// WebdriverIO
const result = await driver.executeScript('mobile: <methodName>', [{
    arg1: "value1",
    arg2: "value2",
}]);
# Python
result = driver.execute_script('mobile: <methodName>', {
    'arg1': 'value1',
    'arg2': 'value2',
})
# Ruby
result = @driver.execute_script 'mobile: <methodName>', {
    arg1: 'value1',
    arg2: 'value2',
}
// Dotnet
object result = driver.ExecuteScript("mobile: <methodName>", new Dictionary<string, object>() {
    {"arg1", "value1"},
    {"arg2", "value2"}
});

mobile: shell

Executes the given shell command on the device under test via ADB connection. This extension exposes a potential security risk and thus is only enabled when explicitly activated by the adb_shell server command line feature specifier.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
command string yes Shell command name to execute, for example echo or rm echo
args Array<string> no Array of command arguments ['-f', '/sdcard/myfile.txt']
timeout number no Command timeout in milliseconds. If the command blocks for longer than this timeout then an exception is going to be thrown. The default timeout is 20000 ms 100000
includeStderr boolean no Whether to include stderr stream into the returned result. false by default true

Returned Result

Depending on the includeStderr value this API could either return a string, which is equal to the stdout stream content of the given command or a dictionary whose elements are stdout and stderr and values are contents of the corresponding outgoing streams. If the command exits with a non-zero return code then an exception is going to be thrown. The exception message will be equal to the command stderr.

mobile: execEmuConsoleCommand

Executes a command through emulator telnet console interface and returns its output. The emulator_console server feature must be enabled in order to use this method.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
command string yes The actual command to execute. See Android Emulator Console Guide for more details on available commands help-verbose
execTimeout number no Timeout used to wait for a server reply to the given command in milliseconds. 60000 ms by default 100000
connTimeout boolean no Console connection timeout in milliseconds. 5000 ms by default 10000
initTimeout boolean no Telnet console initialization timeout in milliseconds (the time between the connection happens and the command prompt). 5000 ms by default 10000

Returned Result

The actual command output. An error is thrown if command execution fails.

Mobile Gesture Commands

UiAutomator2 provides several extensions that allow to automate popular mobile gesture shortcuts:

These gestures are documented in the Automating Mobile Gestures tutorial. Check W3C Actions API and Low-Level Insights on Android Input Events if you need to automate more complicated gestures.

mobile: scroll

Scrolls the given scrollable element until an element identified by strategy and selector becomes visible. This function returns immediately if the destination element is already visible in the view port. Otherwise it would scroll to the very beginning of the scrollable control and tries to reach the destination element by scrolling its parent to the end step by step. The scroll direction (vertical or horizontal) is detected automatically.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
elementId string no The identifier of the scrollable element. It is required this element is a valid scrollable container and it was located by -android uiautomator strategy. If this property is not provided then the first currently available scrollable view is selected for the interaction. 123456-3456-3435-3453453
strategy string yes The following strategies are supported: accessibility id (UiSelector().description), class name (UiSelector().className), -android uiautomator (UiSelector) 'accessibility id'
selector string yes The corresponding lookup value for the selected strategy. 'com.mycompany:id/table'
maxSwipes number no The maximum number of swipes to perform on the target scrollable view in order to reach the destination element. In case this value is unset then it would be retrieved from the scrollable element itself (vua getMaxSearchSwipes() property). 10

mobile: deepLink

Start URI that may take users directly to the specific content in the app. Read Reliably Opening Deep Links Across Platforms and Devices for more details.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
url string yes The URL to start theapp://login/
package string yes The name of the package to start the URI with 'com.mycompany'
waitForLaunch boolean no If false then ADB won't wait for the started activity to return the control. true by default false

mobile: startLogsBroadcast

Starts Android logcat broadcast websocket on the same host and port where Appium server is running at /ws/session/:sessionId:/appium/logcat endpoint. The method will return immediately if the web socket is already listening. Each connected webcoket listener will receive logcat log lines as soon as they are visible to Appium. Read Using Mobile Execution Commands to Continuously Stream Device Logs with Appium for more details.

mobile: stopLogsBroadcast

Stops the previously started logcat broadcasting websocket server. This method will return immediately if no server is running. Read Using Mobile Execution Commands to Continuously Stream Device Logs with Appium for more details.

mobile: deviceidle

This is a wrapper to 'adb shell dumpsys deviceidle' interface. Read Diving Into Android 'M' Doze for more details. This API only exists since Android 6.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
action whitelistAdd or whitelistRemove yes The name of the action to perform whitelistAdd
packages string or string[] yes One or more package names to perfom the above action on 'com.mycompany'

mobile: acceptAlert

Tries to accept an Android alert. This method might not always be reliable as there is no single standard for how Android alerts should look like within the Accessibility representation.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
buttonLabel string no The name/text of the alert button to click in order to accept it. If not provided then the driver will try to autodetect it Accept

mobile: dismissAlert

Tries to dismiss an Android alert. This method might not always be reliable as there is no single standard for how Android alerts should look like within the Accessibility representation.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
buttonLabel string no The name/text of the alert button to click in order to dismiss it. If not provided then the driver will try to autodetect it Dismiss

mobile: batteryInfo

Retrieves the battery information from the device under test.

Returned Result

The extension returns a dictionary whose entries are:

Name Type Description Example
level number Battery level in range [0.0, 1.0], where 1.0 means 100% charge. -1 is returned if the actual value cannot be retrieved from the system. 0.5
state number Battery state. The following values are possible: BATTERY_STATUS_UNKNOWN = 1; BATTERY_STATUS_CHARGING = 2; BATTERY_STATUS_DISCHARGING = 3; BATTERY_STATUS_NOT_CHARGING = 4; BATTERY_STATUS_FULL = 5. -1 is returned if the actual value cannot be retrieved from the system. 4

mobile: deviceInfo

Retrieves the information about the device under test, like the device model, serial number, network connectivity info, etc.

Returned Result

The extension returns a dictionary whose entries are the device properties. Check https://github.com/appium/appium-uiautomator2-server/blob/master/app/src/main/java/io/appium/uiautomator2/handler/GetDeviceInfo.java to get the full list of returned keys and their corresponding values.

mobile: getDeviceTime

Retrieves the current device's timestamp.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
format string no The set of format specifiers. Read https://momentjs.com/docs/ to get the full list of supported datetime format specifiers. The default format is YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZ, which complies to ISO-8601 YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZ

Returned Result

The device timestamp string formatted according to the given specifiers

mobile: changePermissions

Changes package permissions in runtime.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
permissions string or Array<string> yes The full name of the permission to be changed or a list of permissions. Consider checking the full list of standard Android permission names. If all magic string is passed (available since driver version 2.8.0) and target equals pm (the default value) then the chosen action is going to be applied to all permissions requested/granted by the 'appPackage'. If target is set to appops (available since v2.11.0) then check AppOpsManager.java sources to get the full list of supported appops permission names for the given Android platform. The all magic string is unsupported for the appops target. ['android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION', 'android.permission.BROADCAST_SMS'] all ['READ_SMS', 'ACCESS_NOTIFICATIONS']
appPackage string no The application package to set change permissions on. Defaults to the package name under test com.mycompany.myapp
action string no Either grant (the default action) or revoke if target is set to pm, otherwise one of: allow (default), deny, ignore, default. allow
target string no Either pm (default) or appops (available since v2.11.0). The appops one requires adb_shell server security option to be enabled appops

mobile: getPermissions

Gets runtime permissions list for the given application package.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
type string no One of possible permission types to get. Can be one of: denied, granted or requested (the default value). granted
appPackage string no The application package to get permissions from. Defaults to the package name under test com.mycompany.myapp

Returned Result

Array of strings, where each string is a permission name. the array could be empty.

mobile: performEditorAction

Performs IME action on the currently focused edit element.

Very often Android developers use onEditorAction callback with actionId argument to implement actions handling, for example, when Search or Done button is pressed on the on-screen keyboard. This mobile extension is supposed to emulate the invokation of such callback on the focused element.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
action string yes The name or an integer code of the editor action to be executed. The following action names are supported: normal, unspecified, none, go, search, send, next, done, previous. Read EditorInfo for more details on this topic. search

mobile: startScreenStreaming

Starts device screen broadcast by creating MJPEG server. Multiple calls to this method have no effect unless the previous streaming session is stopped. This method only works if the adb_screen_streaming feature is enabled on the server side. It is also required that GStreamer with gst-plugins-base, gst-plugins-good and gst-plugins-bad packages are installed and available in PATH on the server machine.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
width number no The scaled width of the device's screen. If unset then the script will assign it to the actual screen width measured in pixels. 768
height number no The scaled height of the device's screen. If unset then the script will assign it to the actual screen height measured in pixels. 1024
bitRate number no The video bit rate for the video, in bits per second. The default value is 4000000 (4 Mb/s). You can increase the bit rate to improve video quality, but doing so results in larger movie files. 1024000
host string no The IP address/host name to start the MJPEG server on. You can set it to 0.0.0.0 to trigger the broadcast on all available network interfaces. 127.0.0.1 by default 0.0.0.0
pathname string no The HTTP request path the MJPEG server should be available on. If unset then any pathname on the given host/port combination will work. Note that the value should always start with a single slash: / /myserver
tcpPort number no The port number to start the internal TCP MJPEG broadcast on. This type of broadcast always starts on the loopback interface (127.0.0.1). 8094 by default 5024
port number no The port number to start the MJPEG server on. 8093 by default 5023
quality number no The quality value for the streamed JPEG images. This number should be in range [1, 100], where 100 is the best quality. 70 by default 80
considerRotation boolean no If set to true then GStreamer pipeline will increase the dimensions of the resulting images to properly fit images in both landscape and portrait orientations. Set it to true if the device rotation is not going to be the same during the broadcasting session. false by default false
logPipelineDetails boolean no Whether to log GStreamer pipeline events into the standard log output. Might be useful for debugging purposes. false by default true

mobile: stopScreenStreaming

Stop the previously started screen streaming. If no screen streaming server has been started then nothing is done.

mobile: getNotifications

Retrieves Android notifications via Appium Settings helper. Appium Settings app itself must be manually granted to access notifications under device Settings in order to make this feature working. Different vendors might require more than just the normal Notification permissions at the usual Apps menu. Try to look in places like Privacy menus if you are getting zero items retrieved while expecting some results.

Appium Settings helper keeps all the active notifications plus notifications that appeared while it was running in the internal buffer, but no more than 100 items altogether. Newly appeared notifications are always added to the head of the notifications array. The isRemoved flag is set to true for notifications that have been removed. See https://developer.android.com/reference/android/service/notification/StatusBarNotification and https://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Notification.html for more information on available notification properties and their values.

Returned Result

The example output is:

{
   "statusBarNotifications":[
     {
       "isGroup":false,
       "packageName":"io.appium.settings",
       "isClearable":false,
       "isOngoing":true,
       "id":1,
       "tag":null,
       "notification":{
         "title":null,
         "bigTitle":"Appium Settings",
         "text":null,
         "bigText":"Keep this service running, so Appium for Android can properly interact with several system APIs",
         "tickerText":null,
         "subText":null,
         "infoText":null,
         "template":"android.app.Notification$BigTextStyle"
       },
       "userHandle":0,
       "groupKey":"0|io.appium.settings|1|null|10133",
       "overrideGroupKey":null,
       "postTime":1576853518850,
       "key":"0|io.appium.settings|1|null|10133",
       "isRemoved":false
     }
   ]
}

mobile: openNotifications

Opens notifications drawer on the device under test. Does nothing if the drawer is already opened. Available since driver version 2.23

mobile: listSms

Retrieves the list of the most recent SMS properties list via Appium Settings helper. Messages are sorted by date in descending order.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
max number no The maximum count of recent messages to retrieve. 100 by default 10

Returned Result

The example output is:

 {
   "items":[
     {
       "id":"2",
       "address":"+123456789",
       "person":null,
       "date":"1581936422203",
       "read":"0",
       "status":"-1",
       "type":"1",
       "subject":null,
       "body":"\"text message2\"",
       "serviceCenter":null
     },
     {
       "id":"1",
       "address":"+123456789",
       "person":null,
       "date":"1581936382740",
       "read":"0",
       "status":"-1",
       "type":"1",
       "subject":null,
       "body":"\"text message\"",
       "serviceCenter":null
     }
   ],
   "total":2
 }

mobile: type

Types the given Unicode string. It is expected that the focus is already put to the destination input field before this method is called. The main difference between this method and the sendKeys one is that it emulates true typing like it was done from an on-screen keyboard. It also properly supports Unicode input characters.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
text string yes The text to type testing

mobile: sensorSet

Emulate changing of sensor values on the connected emulator. This extension does not work on real devices.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
sensorType string yes The set of all supported sensor types could be found in adb-emu-commands.js (look for SENSORS object values). Check the output of sensor status command in the emulator console to see more details on the available sensor types light
value string yes Check the output of sensor get <sensorType> command in the emulator console to see the acceptable value format for the given sensor type 50

mobile: pullFile

Pulls a remote file from the device.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
remotePath string yes The full path to the remote file or a specially formatted path, which points to an item inside an app bundle, for example @my.app.id/my/path. It is mandatory for the app bundle to have debugging enabled in order to use the latter remotePath format. If the file with the given name does not exist then an exception will be thrown. /sdcard/foo.bar

Returned Result

Base64-encoded string, which represents the content of the remote file.

mobile: pushFile

Pushes a local file to the device.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
remotePath string yes The path on the device to where the payload should be written. The value format is similar to the one used in pullFile extension. If the file with the same name already exists then it will be silently overridden. /sdcard/foo.bar
payload string yes Base64-encoded content of the file to be pushed. QXBwaXVt

mobile: pullFolder

Pulls a remote folder from the device.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
remotePath string yes Same as for pullFile extension, but should be pointing to a remote folder /sdcard/yolo/

Returned Result

Base64-encoded string, which represents the zipped content of the remote folder.

mobile: deleteFile

Deletes a file on the remote device.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
remotePath string yes The full path to the remote file or a file inside an application bundle /sdcard/myfile.txt or @my.app.id/path/in/bundle

mobile: isAppInstalled

Verify whether an application is installed on the device under test.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
appId string yes The identifier of the application package to be checked my.app.id
user number or string no The user ID for which the package is installed.. The current user is used by default 1006

Returned Result

True or false

mobile: queryAppState

Queries the current state of the app.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
appId string yes The identifier of the application package to be checked my.app.id

Returned Result

The following numbers could returned:

mobile: activateApp

Activates the given application or launches it if necessary. The action literally simulates clicking the corresponding application icon on the dashboard.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
appId string yes The identifier of the application package to be activated my.app.id

mobile: removeApp

Remove the corresponding application if is installed. The call is ignored if the app is not installed.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
appId string yes The identifier of the application package to be removed my.app.id
timeout number no The count of milliseconds to wait until the app is terminated. 20000ms by default. 1500, 0
keepData boolean no Set to true in order to keep the application data and cache folders after uninstall. true

Returned Result

True is the app has been found on the device and successfully removed. Otherwise false.

mobile: terminateApp

Terminates the app and waits until the app is terminated up to the given timeout by checking the app state to ensure if the app process is actually stopped.

The app state check can be skipped if the given timeout is lower or equal to zero since UIAutomator driver 2.9.0. The skip helps when you want to terminate the app process but do not want to check the process existence because the app under test may, for example, restart it automatically.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
appId string yes The identifier of the application package to be terminated my.app.id
timeout number no The count of milliseconds to wait until the app is terminated. 500ms by default. 1500, 0

Returned Result

True if the app has been successfully terminated.

mobile: installApp

Installs the given application package to the device under test. It might raise the INSTALL_FAILED_VERSION_DOWNGRADE error if the installation was a version downgrade.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
appPath string yes The local .apk(s) path on the server filesystem or a remote url. /app/path.apk
timeout number no The count of milliseconds to wait until the app is installed.. 6000ms by default. 120000
allowTestPackages boolean no Set to true in order to allow test packages installation. false by default true
useSdcard boolean no Set to true to install the app on sdcard instead of the device memory. false by default true
grantPermissions boolean no Set to true in order to grant all the permissions requested in the application's manifest automatically after the installation is completed under Android 6+. The targetSdkVersion in the application manifest must be greater or equal to 23 and the Android version on the device under test must be greater or equal to Android 6 (API level 23) to grant permissions. Applications whose targetSdkVersion is lower than or equal to 22 must be reisntalled to grant permissions for Android 6+ devices. false by default true
replace boolean no Set it to false if you don't want the application to be upgraded/reinstalled if it is already present on the device, but throw an error instead. true by default false
checkVersion boolean no Set to true, in order to skip the application installation if the device under test has a greater or equal to the application version. It may help to avoid INSTALL_FAILED_VERSION_DOWNGRADE error and unnecessary installation. true

mobile: clearApp

Deletes all data associated with a package. Calls adb shell pm clear under the hood. The app should be accessible, should not be running, and should exist on the device under test for this extension to work properly.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
appId string yes The identifier of the application package to be cleared my.app.id

Returned Result

Stdout of the corresponding adb command.

mobile: startActivity

Starts the given activity intent. Invokes am start/am start-activity command under the hood. This method extends the functionality of the Start Activity app management API.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
intent string yes The full name of the activity intent to start com.some.package.name/.YourActivityClassName
user number or string no The user ID for which the service is started. The current user is used by default 1006
wait boolean no Set it to true if you want to block the method call until the Activity Manager's process returns the control to the system. false
stop boolean no Set it to true to force stop the target app before starting the activity. false
windowingMode integer no The windowing mode to launch the activity into. Check WindowConfiguration.java for more details on possible windowing modes (constants starting with WINDOWING_MODE_). 1
activityType integer no The activity type to launch the activity as. Check WindowConfiguration.java for more details on possible activity types (constants starting with ACTIVITY_TYPE_). 1
action string no Action name. The actual value for the Activity Manager's -a argument. android.intent.action.MAIN
uri string no Unified resource identifier. The actual value for the Activity Manager's -d argument. https://appium.io
mimeType string no Mime type. The actual value for the Activity Manager's -t argument. application/json
identifier string no Optional identifier. The actual value for the Activity Manager's -i argument. my_identifier
categories string or Array<string> no One or more category names. The actual value(s) for the Activity Manager's -c argument. android.intent.category.LAUNCHER
component string no Component name. The actual value for the Activity Manager's -n argument. com.myapp/com.myapp.SplashActivity
package string no Package name. The actual value for the Activity Manager's -p argument. com.myapp
extras Array<Array<string>> no Optional intent arguments. Must be represented as an array of arrays, where each subarray item contains two (only in case it no value is required for the given type) or three string items: value type, key (variable name) and the value itself. Supported value types are: s: string. Value must be a valid string; sn: null. Value is ignored for this type; z: boolean. Value must be either true or false; i: integer. Value must be a valid 4-byte integer number; l: long. Value must be a valid 8-byte long number; f: float: Value must be a valid float number; u: uri. Value must be a valid uniform resource identifier string; cn: component name. Value must be a valid component name string; ia: Integer[]. Value must be a string of comma-separated integers; ial: List<Integer>. Value must be a string of comma-separated integers; la: Long[]. Value must be a string of comma-separated long numbers; lal: List<Long>. Value must be a string of comma-separated long numbers; fa: Float[]. Value must be a string of comma-separated float numbers; fal: List<Float>. Value must be a string of comma-separated float numbers; sa: String[]. Value must be comma-separated strings. To embed a comma into a string escape it using "\,"; sal: List<String>. Value must be comma-separated strings. To embed a comma into a string, escape it using "\," [['s', 'varName1', 'My String1'], ['s', 'varName2', 'My String2'], ['ia', 'arrName', '1,2,3,4']]
flags string no Intent startup-specific flags as a hexadecimal string. Check Intent documentation for the list of available flag values (constants starting with FLAG_ACTIVITY_). Flag values could be merged using the logical 'or' operation. 0x10200000 is the combination of two flags: 0x10000000 FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK | 0x00200000 FLAG_ACTIVITY_RESET_TASK_IF_NEEDED

Returned Result

The actual stdout of the downstream am command.

Example

Use the code snippet below to represent the following shell command: shell am start-activity -W -n io.appium.android.apis/io.appium.android.apis.ApiDemos -S -a android.intent.action.MAIN -c android.intent.category.LAUNCHER -f 0x10200000', which is usually similar to what is called in a new session request. If you replace 'io.appium.android.apis/io.appium.android.apis.ApiDemos' with your expected launchable activity, it would be the alternative method to start the activity in session.

Please check how appium adds flags for more details to understand how Appium builds flags.

# Ruby
driver.execute_script 'mobile: startActivity', {
    wait: true,
    stop: true,
    action: 'android.intent.action.MAIN',
    component: 'io.appium.android.apis/io.appium.android.apis.ApiDemos',
    categories: ['android.intent.category.LAUNCHER'],
    flags: '0x10200000'
}

mobile: startService

Starts the given service intent. Invokes am startservice or am start-service command under the hood.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
intent string no The full name of the service intent to start com.some.package.name/.YourServiceSubClassName
user number or string no The user ID for which the service is started. The current user id is used by default 1006
foreground boolean no Set it to true if your service must be started as a foreground service. The argument only works for Android 8 and above. false
action string no See the documentation for startActivity extension android.intent.action.MAIN
uri string no See the documentation for startActivity extension https://appium.io
mimeType string no See the documentation for startActivity extension application/json
identifier string no See the documentation for startActivity extension my_identifier
categories string or Array<string> no See the documentation for startActivity extension com.myapp/com.myapp.SplashActivity
component string no See the documentation for startActivity extension android.intent.category.LAUNCHER
package string no See the documentation for startActivity extension com.myapp
extras Array<Array<string>> no See the documentation for startActivity extension [['s', 'varName1', 'My String1'], ['s', 'varName2', 'My String2'], ['ia', 'arrName', '1,2,3,4']]
flags string no See the documentation for startActivity extension 0x10200000 is the combination of two flags: 0x10000000 FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK | 0x00200000 FLAG_ACTIVITY_RESET_TASK_IF_NEEDED

Returned Result

The actual stdout of the downstream am command.

mobile: stopService

Stops the given service intent. Invokes am stopservice or am stop-service command under the hood.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
intent string no The full name of the service intent to stop com.some.package.name/.YourServiceSubClassName
user number or string no The user ID for which the service is started. The current user id is used by default 1006
action string no See the documentation for startActivity extension android.intent.action.MAIN
uri string no See the documentation for startActivity extension https://appium.io
mimeType string no See the documentation for startActivity extension application/json
identifier string no See the documentation for startActivity extension my_identifier
categories string or Array<string> no See the documentation for startActivity extension com.myapp/com.myapp.SplashActivity
component string no See the documentation for startActivity extension android.intent.category.LAUNCHER
package string no See the documentation for startActivity extension com.myapp
extras Array<Array<string>> no See the documentation for startActivity extension [['s', 'varName1', 'My String1'], ['s', 'varName2', 'My String2'], ['ia', 'arrName', '1,2,3,4']]
flags string no See the documentation for startActivity extension 0x10200000 is the combination of two flags: 0x10000000 FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK | 0x00200000 FLAG_ACTIVITY_RESET_TASK_IF_NEEDED

mobile: broadcast

Send a broadcast Intent. Invokes am broadcast command under the hood.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
intent string no The full name of the intent to broadcast com.some.package.name/.YourIntentClassName
user number or string no Specify which user to send to; if not specified then send to all users. Possible values are all/current/<numeric user id> current
receiverPermission string no Require receiver to hold the given permission android.permission.READ_PROFILE
allowBackgroundActivityStarts boolean no The receiver may start activities even if in the background if set to true false
action string no See the documentation for startActivity extension android.intent.action.MAIN
uri string no See the documentation for startActivity extension https://appium.io
mimeType string no See the documentation for startActivity extension application/json
identifier string no See the documentation for startActivity extension my_identifier
categories string or Array<string> no See the documentation for startActivity extension com.myapp/com.myapp.SplashActivity
component string no See the documentation for startActivity extension android.intent.category.LAUNCHER
package string no See the documentation for startActivity extension com.myapp
extras Array<Array<string>> no See the documentation for startActivity extension [['s', 'varName1', 'My String1'], ['s', 'varName2', 'My String2'], ['ia', 'arrName', '1,2,3,4']]
flags string no See the documentation for startActivity extension 0x10200000 is the combination of two flags: 0x10000000 FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK | 0x00200000 FLAG_ACTIVITY_RESET_TASK_IF_NEEDED

Returned Result

The actual stdout of the downstream am command.

mobile: getContexts

Retrieves a WebViews mapping based on CDP endpoints

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
waitForWebviewMs number no Tells UiAutomator2 driver for how long (in milliseconds) to wait for web view(s) to appear since UiAutomator2 driver v2.53.0. If a Chrome process running on the device under test fails to create a connection to the devtools socket, then the chromedriver will rise an error similar to failed to connect to socket 'localabstract:chrome_devtools_remote' in UiAutomator2 driver. It could cause no WebViews found result, although a couple of retrials may fix it. This argument helps to keep trying to get WebView(s) up to the given time milliseconds as one command call. This issue tends to occur Chrome v115 and over so far. issues#19251 contains more details. If set to 0ms (the default value), then UiAutomator2 driver only checks the WebView(s) availability once. 10000

Returned Result

The following json demonstrates the example of WebviewsMapping object. Note that description in page can be an empty string most likely when it comes to Mobile Chrome)

 {
   "proc": "@webview_devtools_remote_22138",
   "webview": "WEBVIEW_22138",
   "info": {
     "Android-Package": "io.appium.settings",
     "Browser": "Chrome/74.0.3729.185",
     "Protocol-Version": "1.3",
     "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; Android SDK built for x86 Build/QSR1.190920.001; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/74.0.3729.185 Mobile Safari/537.36",
     "V8-Version": "7.4.288.28",
     "WebKit-Version": "537.36 (@22955682f94ce09336197bfb8dffea991fa32f0d)",
     "webSocketDebuggerUrl": "ws://127.0.0.1:10900/devtools/browser"
   },
   "pages": [
     {
       "description": "{\"attached\":true,\"empty\":false,\"height\":1458,\"screenX\":0,\"screenY\":336,\"visible\":true,\"width\":1080}",
       "devtoolsFrontendUrl": "http://chrome-devtools-frontend.appspot.com/serve_rev/@22955682f94ce09336197bfb8dffea991fa32f0d/inspector.html?ws=127.0.0.1:10900/devtools/page/27325CC50B600D31B233F45E09487B1F",
       "id": "27325CC50B600D31B233F45E09487B1F",
       "title": "Releases · appium/appium · GitHub",
       "type": "page",
       "url": "https://github.com/appium/appium/releases",
       "webSocketDebuggerUrl": "ws://127.0.0.1:10900/devtools/page/27325CC50B600D31B233F45E09487B1F"
     }
   ],
   "webviewName": "WEBVIEW_com.io.appium.setting"
 }

mobile: installMultipleApks

Install applications via install-multiple option. Please read more details in the corresponding section of the adb --help command output.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
apks Array<string> yes The path to APKs. Each path should be the full path to the apk to be installed, or an URL to a remote location. ['/path/to/local.apk', 'https://github.com/appium/ruby_lib_core/blob/master/test/functional/app/api.apk.zip?raw=true']
options object no Installation options. If you want enable -g option, you could specify that {grantPermissions: true}. allowTestPackages corresponds -t, useSdcard corresponds -s, replace corresponds -r (-r is enabled by default), partialInstall corresponds -p. {grantPermissions: true, partialInstall: true}

mobile: lock

Lock the device (and optionally unlock it after a certain amount of time). Only simple (e.g. without a password) locks are supported.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
seconds number string no The number of seconds after which to unlock the device. Set to 0 or leave it empty to require manual unlock (e.g. do not block and automatically unlock afterwards). 5

mobile: unlock

Unlocks the device if it is locked. Noop if the device's screen is not locked.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
key string yes The unlock key. See the documentation on appium:unlockKey capability for more details 12345
type string yes The unlock type. See the documentation on appium:unlockType capability for more details password
strategy string no Unlock strategy. See the documentation on appium:unlockStrategy capability for more details uiautomator
timeoutMs number no Unlock timeout. See the documentation on appium:unlockSuccessTimeout capability for more details 5000

mobile: isLocked

Determine whether the device is locked.

Returned Result

Either true or false

mobile: setGeolocation

Sets emulated geolocation coordinates on the device under test.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
latitude number yes Latitude value 32.456
longitude number yes longitude value 32.456
altitude number no Altitude value. Zero by default 5.678

mobile: getGeolocation

Retrieves current geolocation coordinates from the device under test. If coordinates are mocked/emulated then these coordinates would be returned.

Returned Result

A map with the following entries:

Name Type Description Example
latitude number Latitude value 32.456
longitude number longitude value 32.456
altitude number Altitude value 5.678

mobile: resetGeolocation

Resets mocked geolocation provider to the default/system one. Only works for real devices.

mobile: refreshGpsCache

Sends a request to refresh the GPS cache on the device under test. By default the location tracking is configured for low battery consumption, so you might need to call this extension periodically to get the updated geo location if the actual (or mocked) device location is changed too frequently. The feature only works if the device under test has Google Play Services installed. In case the vanilla LocationManager is used the device API level must be at version 30 (Android R) or higher.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
timeoutMs number no The maximum number of milliseconds to block until GPS cache is refreshed. If the API call does not receive a confirmation about successful cache refresh within this timeout then an error is thrown. Providing zero or a negative value to it skips waiting completely and does not check for any errors. 20000 ms by default. 60000

mobile: startMediaProjectionRecording

Starts a new recording of the device activity using Media Projection API. This API is available since Android 10 (API level 29) and allows to record device screen and audio in high quality. Video and audio encoding is done by Android itself. The recording is done by Appium Settings helper.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
resolution string no The resolution of the resulting video, which usually equals to Full HD 1920x1080 on most phones, however you could change it to one of the following supported resolutions: "1920x1080", "1280x720", "720x480", "320x240", "176x144" 1280x720
maxDurationSec number no The maximum number of seconds allowed for the recording to run. 900 seconds by default (15 minutes) 300
priority string no Recording thread priority is set to maximum (high) by default. However if you face performance drops during testing with recording enabled, you could reduce the recording priority to normal or low. low
filename string no You can type recording video file name as you want, but recording currently supports only "mp4" format so your filename must end with ".mp4". An invalid file name will fail to start the recording. If not provided then the current timestamp will be used as file name. screen.mp4

Returned Result

true if a new recording has successfully started. false if another recording is currently running.

mobile: isMediaProjectionRecordingRunning

Check if a media projection recording is currently running

Returned Result

true if a recording is running.

mobile: stopMediaProjectionRecording

Stops a recording and retrieves the recently recorded media. If no recording has been started before then an error is thrown. If the recording has been already finished before this API has been called then the most recent recorded media is returned.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
remotePath string no The path to the remote location, where the resulting video should be uploaded. The following protocols are supported: http/https, ftp. Null or empty string value (the default setting) means the content of resulting file should be encoded as Base64 and passed as the endpoont response value. An exception will be thrown if the generated media file is too big to fit into the available process memory. https://myserver.com/upload
user string no The name of the user for the remote authentication. admin
pass string no The password for the remote authentication. pa$$w0rd
method string no The http multipart upload method name. The 'PUT' one is used by default. POST
headers Map<string, string> no Additional headers mapping for multipart http(s) uploads {'Agent': '007'}
fileFieldName string no The name of the form field, where the file content BLOB should be stored for http(s) uploads. file by default blob
formFields Map<string, string> or Array<Pair> no Additional form fields for multipart http(s) uploads. {'name': 'yolo.mp4'}
uploadTimeout number no The maximum number of milliseconds to wait until the media file is uploaded to the remote location. 240000 ms by default. 30000

Returned Result

Base64-encoded content of the recorded media file if remotePath argument is falsy or an empty string.

mobile: getConnectivity

Returns connectivity states for different services

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
services string or string[] no One or more services to get the connectivity for. Supported service names are: wifi, data, airplaneMode. If no service names are provided then all supported names are assumed by default. [wifi, data]

Returned Result

A map is returned containing the following possible items (depending on which values have been passed to services argument):

Name Type Description
wifi boolean True if wifi is enabled
data boolean True if mobile data connection is enabled
airplaneMode boolean True if Airplane Mode is enabled

mobile: setConnectivity

Set the connectivity state for different services. At least one valid service name must be provided in arguments. Missing values tell the driver to not change the corresponding service's state.

Note

Switching Wi-Fi and mobile data states reliably work on emulators for all Android versions. Real devices support proper state switching only since Android 11.

Note

UiAutomator2 REST server app is running on the device under test and might be terminated/disconnected by Android thus failing the driver session as a result of using this API. The only way to restore the session would be to quit it after the network state is changed and then reopen it with noReset capability being set to true when the connectivity is restored.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
wifi booolean no Either to enable or disable Wi-Fi. false
data booolean no Either to enable or disable mobile data. false
airplaneMode booolean no Either to enable or disable Airplane Mode. false

mobile: getAppStrings

Retrieves string resources for the given app language. An error is thrown if strings cannot be fetched or no strings exist for the given language abbreviation. Available since driver version 2.15.0

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
language string no The language abbreviation to fetch app strings mapping for. If no language is provided then strings for the default language on the device under test would be returned fr

Returned Result

App strings map, where keys are resource identifiers.

mobile: hideKeyboard

Tries to hide the on-screen keyboard. Throws an exception if the keyboard cannot be hidden. Does nothing if the keyboard is already hidden.

Returned Result

true if the keyboard was successfully hidden or false if it was already invisible.

mobile: isKeyboardShown

Checks if the system on-screen keyboard is visible.

Returned Result

true if the keyboard is visible

mobile: pressKey

Emulates single key press on the key with the given code. Available since driver version 2.17.0

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
keycode number yes A valid Android key code. See KeyEvent documentation for the list of available key codes 0x00000099 (which is KEYCODE_NUMPAD_9)
metastate number no An integer in which each bit set to 1 represents a pressed meta key. See KeyEvent documentation for more details. 0x00000010 (which is META_ALT_LEFT_ON)
flags number no Flags for the particular key event. See KeyEvent documentation for more details. 0x00000001 (which is FLAG_WOKE_HERE)
isLongPress boolean no Whether to emulate long key press. false by default. true

mobile: backgroundApp

Puts the app to the background and waits the given number of seconds. Then restores the app if necessary. The call is blocking. Available since driver version 2.19.0

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
seconds number no The amount of seconds to wait between putting the app to background and restoring it. Any negative value means to not restore the app after putting it to background (the default behavior). 5

mobile: getCurrentActivity

Returns the name of the currently focused app activity. Available since driver version 2.20

Returned Result

The activity class name. Could be null

mobile: getCurrentPackage

Returns the name of the currently focused app package identifier. Available since driver version 2.20

Returned Result

The package class name. Could be null

mobile: getDisplayDensity

Returns the display density value measured in DPI. Available since driver version 2.21

Returned Result

The actual DPI value as integer number

mobile: getSystemBars

Returns properties of various system bars. Available since driver version 2.21

Returned Result

A dictionary whose entries are:

Values are dictionaries with the following properties:

mobile: fingerprint

Emulate fingerprint on Android Emulator. Only works on API 23+. Available since driver version 2.22

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
fingerprintId number yes The value is the id for the finger that was "scanned". It is a unique integer that you assign for each virtual fingerprint. When the app is running you can run this same command each time the emulator prompts you for a fingerprint, you can run the adb command and pass it the fingerprintId to simulate the fingerprint scan. 1

mobile: sendSms

Emulate sending an SMS to the given phone number. Only works on emulators. Available since driver version 2.22

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
phoneNumber string yes The phone number to send SMS to 0123456789
message string yes The SMS message payload Hello

mobile: gsmCall

Emulate a GSM call to the given phone number. Only works on emulators. Available since driver version 2.22

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
phoneNumber string yes The phone number to call to 0123456789
action call or accept or cancel or hold yes One of possible actions to take accept

mobile: gsmSignal

Emulate GSM signal strength change event. Only works on emulators. Available since driver version 2.22

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
strength 0 or 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 yes One of possible signal strength values, where 4 is the best signal. 3

mobile: gsmVoice

Emulate GSM voice state change event. Only works on emulators. Available since driver version 2.22

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
state on or off or denied or searching or roaming or home or unregistered yes Voice state off

mobile: powerAC

Emulate AC power state change. Only works on emulators. Available since driver version 2.22

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
state on or off yes AC Power state off

mobile: powerCapacity

Emulate power capacity change. Only works on emulators. Available since driver version 2.22

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
percent 0 to 100 yes Percentage value in range [0, 100] 50

mobile: networkSpeed

Emulate different network connection speed modes. Only works on emulators. Available since driver version 2.22

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
speed gsm or scsd or gprs or edge or umts or hsdpa or lte or evdo or full yes Mobile network speed mode name edge

mobile: replaceElementValue

Sends a text to the given element by replacing its previous content. Available since driver version 2.22

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
elementId string yes Hexadecimal identifier of the destination text input 123456-3456-3435-3453453
text string yes The text to enter. It could also contain Unicode characters. If the text ends with \\n (the backslash must be escaped, so the char is NOT translated into 0x0A) then the Enter key press is going to be emulated after it is entered (the \\n substring itself will be cut off from the typed text). yolo

mobile: toggleGps

Switches GPS setting state. This API only works reliably since Android 12 (API 31). Available since driver version 2.23

mobile: isGpsEnabled

Returns true if GPS is enabled on the device under test. Available since driver version 2.23

mobile: getPerformanceDataTypes

Fetches the list of supported performance data types that could be used as dataType argument value to mobile: getPerformanceData extension. Available since driver version 2.24

Returned Result

List of strings, where each item is data type name.

mobile: getClipboard

Retrieves the plaintext content of the device's clipboard. Available since driver version 3.7

Returned Result

Base64-encoded content of the clipboard or an empty string if the clipboard is empty.

mobile: setClipboard

Allows to set the plain text content of the device's clipboard. Available since driver version 3.7

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
content string yes Base64-encoded clipboard payload. YXBwaXVt
contentType string no The only supported and the default value is plaintext plaintext
lable string no Optinal label to identify the current clipboard payload. yolo

mobile: getPerformanceData

Retrieves performance data about the given Android subsystem. The data is parsed from the output of the dumpsys utility. Available since driver version 2.24

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
packageName string yes The name of the package identifier to fetch the data for com.myapp
dataType string yes One of supported subsystem names. The full list of supported values is returned by mobile: getPerformanceDataTypes extension. batteryinfo or cpuinfo or memoryinfo or networkinfo

Returned Result

The output depends on the selected subsystem. It is organized into a table, where the first row represents column names and the following rows represent the sampled data for each column. Example output for different data types:

mobile: statusBar

Performs commands on the system status bar. A thin wrapper over adb shell cmd statusbar CLI. Works on Android 8 (Oreo) and newer. Available since driver version 2.25

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
command string yes One of supported status bar commands. expandNotifications
component string no The name of the tile component. It is only required for (add|remove|click)Tile commands. com.package.name/.service.QuickSettingsTileComponent

Status Bar Commands

Returned Result

The actual downstream command output. It depends on the selected command and might be empty.

mobile: scheduleAction

mobile: unscheduleAction

mobile: getActionHistory

These extensions allow to deal with short-living UI elements. Read the documentation on Scheduled Actions for more details and code examples.

mobile: screenshots

Retrieves a screenshot of each display available to Android. This functionality is only supported since Android 10.

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
displayId number or string no Display identifier to take a screenshot for. If not provided then all display screenshots are going to be returned. If no matches were found then an error is thrown. Actual display identifiers could be retrived from the adb shell dumpsys SurfaceFlinger --display-id command output. 1

Returns

A dictionary where each key is the display identifier and the value has the following keys:

mobile: setUiMode

Set the device UI appearance. A thin wrapper over adb shell cmd uimode CLI. Works on Android 10 and newer. Available since driver version 2.34

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
mode string yes One of the supported UI mode names: night or car. night
value string yes The actual mode value to set. Supported values for different UI modes are: night: yes,no,auto,custom_schedule,custom_bedtime, car: yes,no. For example, to switch the device UI to the dark mode you should set mode to night and value to yes, or to no in order to switch back to the light mode. yes

mobile: getUiMode

Gets the device UI appearance for the given mode. A thin wrapper over adb shell cmd uimode CLI. Works on Android 10 and newer. Available since driver version 2.34

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
mode string yes One of the supported UI mode names: night or car. night

Returned Result

The actual mode value. Supported values for different UI modes are:

mobile: sendTrimMemory

Simulates the onTrimMemory() event for the given package, which allows to verify the app functinality under different RAM-related circumstances. Read Manage your app's memory for more details. Available since driver version 2.41

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
pkg string yes The package name to send the trimMemory event to. com.my.company
level 'COMPLETE' or 'MODERATE' or 'BACKGROUND' or 'UI_HIDDEN' or 'RUNNING_CRITICAL' or 'RUNNING_LOW' or 'RUNNING_MODERATE' yes The actual memory trim level to simulate RUNNING_CRITICAL

mobile: injectEmulatorCameraImage

Simulates an image injection into the VirtualScene emulator camera background. Calls to this extension should seamlessly change the foreground picture in the VirtualScene emulator camera view to the supplied one. This extension could, for example, be useful if you need to verify QR codes scanning by the application under test. Available since driver version 3.2.0

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
payload string yes A valid base64-encoded .PNG image payload. Other image formats are not supported. This image will be shown on the virtual scene foreground as soon as you open a camera client app. iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUh...

Required Preconditions

This feature only works on Android emulators. It is mandatory to provide a value (it could also be an empty map to use defaults) to the appium:injectedImageProperties capability in order to prepare the emulator for image injection if this extension is used on a newly created or resetted device.

There is also a possiblity to perform a manual configuration of the necessary preconditions if you don't want to restart the emulator on session startup. For that replace the content of the Toren1BD.posters file located in $ANDROID_HOME/emulator/resources folder with the following text:

poster wall
size 2 2
position -0.807 0.320 5.316
rotation 0 -150 0
default poster.png

poster table
size 1 1
position 0 0 -1.5
rotation 0 0 0

Save the changed file and re(start) the emulator to pick up the changes. You may also customize values for different image properties under poster table in the above text snippet.

mobile: bluetooth

Allows to control the bluetooth adapter in the device under test. An error is thrown if the device has no default bluetooth adapter. Available since driver version 3.4.0

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
action string yes The action to execute on the bluetooth adapter. The following actions are supported: enable, disable, unpairAll. Calling the same action more than once is a noop. disable

mobile: nfc

Allows to control the NFC adapter in the device under test. An error is thrown if the device has no default NFC adapter. Available since driver version 3.4.0

Arguments

Name Type Required Description Example
action string yes The action to execute on the NFC adapter. The following actions are supported: enable, disable. Calling the same action more than once is a noop. disable

Applications Management

UiAutomator2 driver supports Appium endpoints for applications management:

Refer to the corresponding Appium client tutorial to find out the names of the corresponding wrappers for these APIs.

Useful links:

Files Management

UiAutomator2 driver supports Appium endpoints for files management:

Refer to the corresponding Appium client tutorial to find out the names of the corresponding wrappers for these APIs.

Useful links:

Clipboard Management

UiAutomator2 driver supports Appium endpoints for clipboard management:

Useful links:

Hybrid Mode

UIA2 driver supports automation of web pages opened in mobile Chrome or Chromium, and hybrid apps that use Chrome-based web views, by managing a Chromedriver instance and proxying commands to it when necessary.

The following endpoints are used to control the current context:

By default, the driver starts in the native context, which means that most of REST API commands are being forwarded to the downstream appium-uiautomator2-server. This server is running on the device under test, and trasforms API commands to appropriate low-level UiAutomator framework calls. There is always only one native context, although multiple web contexts are possible. Each web context could contain zero or more pages/windows. It is possible to start UIA2 driver session in web context by default by setting the browserName capability value or by enabling the appium:autoWebview capability.

Web context(s) could be detected if a browser or a web view is active on the device. If a context is switched to a web one then UIA2 driver spins up a Chromedriver instance for it and forwards most of the commands to that Chromedriver instance. Note that web views must be properly configured and debuggable in order to connect to them or get their names in the list of available contexts. The availability of a particular web view could be easily verified by using Chrome Remote Debugger. You could switch between different contexts (and windows in them) at any time during the session.

The appium-chromedriver package bundled with UIA2 always tries to download the most recent version of Chromedriver known to it. Google requires that the used Chromedriver version must always match to the version of the browser or a web view engine being automated. If these versions do not match then Chromedriver fails its creation, and context switch API shows a failure message similar to:

An unknown server-side error occurred while processing the command.
Original error: unknown error: Chrome version must be >= 55.0.2883.0

To work around this issue it is necessary to provide UIA2 driver with a proper Chromedriver binary that matches to the Chrome engine version running on the device under test. Read the Chromedriver/Chrome compatibility topic below to know more about finding a matching Chromedriver executable.

There are several ways to provide a customized Chromedriver to UIA2 driver:

When installing the driver

Note: This only works for driver versions below 3.8.0

Specify the Chromedriver version in the CHROMEDRIVER_VERSION environment variable:

CHROMEDRIVER_VERSION=2.20 appium install driver uiautomator2

When starting a session (manual discovery)

Chromedriver version can be specified in session capabilities, by providing the appium:chromedriverExecutable capability, containing the full path to a matching Chromedriver executable, which must be manually downloaded and put to the server file system.

When starting a session (automated discovery)

UIA2 driver could also try to detect the version of the target Chrome engine and download matching chromedriver for it automatically if it does not exist on the local file system. Read the Automatic discovery of compatible Chromedriver topic below for more details.

Chromedriver/Chrome Compatibility

Since version 2.46 Google has changed their rules for Chromedriver versioning, so now the major Chromedriver version corresponds to the major web view/browser version, that it can automate. Follow the Version Selection document in order to manually find the Chromedriver, that supports your current browser/web view if its major version is equal or above 73.

To find the minimum supported browsers for older Chromedriver versions (below 73), get the Chromium source code, check out the release commit, and check the variable kMinimumSupportedChromeVersion in the file src/chrome/test/chromedriver/chrome/version.cc. (To find the release commits, you could use git log --pretty=format:'%h | %s%d' | grep -i "Release Chromedriver version".)

The complete list of available Chromedriver releases and release notes is located at Chromedriver Storage.

The list of Chromedriver versions and their matching minimum Chrome versions known to appium-chromedriver package is stored at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/appium/appium-chromedriver/master/config/mapping.json

Automatic Discovery of Compatible Chromedriver

UIA2 driver is able to pick the correct Chromedriver for the version of Chrome/web view under test. While appium-chromedriver only comes bundled with the Chromedriver most recently released at the time of the corresponding package version's release, more Chromedriver versions could be downloaded and placed into a custom location indicated to UIA2 driver via the appium:chromedriverExecutableDir capability.

A custom mapping of Chromedrivers to the minimum Chrome/web view version they support could be given to UIA2 driver through the appium:chromedriverChromeMappingFile capability. This should be the absolute path to a file with the mapping in it. The contents of the file needs to be parsable as a JSON object, like:

{
  "2.42": "63.0.3239",
  "2.41": "62.0.3202"
}

There is a possibility to automatically download the necessary chromedriver(s) into appium:chromedriverExecutableDir from the official Google storage. The script will automatically search for the newest chromedriver version that supports the given browser/web view, download it (the hash sum is verified as well for the downloaded archive) and add to the appium:chromedriverChromeMappingFile mapping. Everything, which is needed to be done from your side is to execute the server with chromedriver_autodownload feature enabled (like appium server --allow-insecure chromedriver_autodownload).

Troubleshooting Chromedriver Download Issues

Check the Custom binaries url section of appium-chromedriver README for more details on how to customize the download CDN.

It may also be necessary to adjust network proxy and firewall settings for the above to work.

If you use a UIA2 driver below version 3.8.0, and you would like skip the automated download of Chromedriver upon driver install, do it by defining the APPIUM_SKIP_CHROMEDRIVER_INSTALL environment variable:

APPIUM_SKIP_CHROMEDRIVER_INSTALL=1 appium driver install uiautomator2

W3C Support in Web Context

Chromedriver did not follow the W3C standard until version 75. If you encounter proxy command error like this issue, please update your Chromedriver version. Old Android devices can't use newer Chromedriver versions. You could avoid the error if you enforce Mobile JSON Wire Protocol for Chromedriver. This could be done by providing {'w3c': False} item to appium:chromeOptions capability value. Since major version 75 W3C mode is the default one for Chromedriver, although it could be still switched to JSONWP one as described above (keep in mind that eventually Chromedriver will drop the support of JSON Wire protocol completely). The history of W3C support in Chromedriver is available for reading at downloads section.

Troubleshooting

Activity Startup

If you experience issues with application activities being not found or not starting then consider checking How To Troubleshoot Activities Startup article.

Poor Elements Interaction Performance

If you observe automated tests need at least 10 seconds or more to locate/interact with a single element then consider changing the default value for waitForIdleTimeout setting. By default, UiAutomator framework (and all other Accessibility-based frameworks) always waits for the accessibility event stream to become idle before interacting with it (the default timeout there is 10000ms). This is needed to make sure all animations/transitions are finished before you, for example, interact with an element by clicking it. In case the application under test constantly runs some background animations or hogs the accessibility event stream in some other way these waits may significantly slow down the automation flow.

Setting the value of waitForIdleTimeout to zero 0 ms should completely disable any waits, and enforce interactions to happen immediately ignoring the accessibility event stream state. The downside of that would be that all interactions are never going to be delayed, so clicks and other actions might happen at wrong places of the application UI. That is why is it important to check the app under test first and fix its source to get rid of activities hogging the event loop. Sometimes it makes sence to disable animations completely for the app build under test, which could speed up your flows significantly in some situations.

Warning waitForIdleTimeout is a setting, not a capability.

Session Startup Issues

Sometimes various legacy driver parts might be cached on the device under test (like settings.apk), which would prevent a new/upgraded driver version from starting a session. Run

appium driver run uiautomator2 reset

in order to cleanup the cached UIA2 driver binaries from all connected devices on the current machine.

Socket Hangup Error

This type of error means the driver is unable to connect to the UiAutomator2 REST server, which is running on the device under test. There might be multiple causes to this issue:

Element(s) Cannot be Found

All element location strategies in UIA2 driver work similarly under the hood except of the xpath one. If some element is not found, but you see/assume it is present in the page source then make sure no race condition happens. Add a timer and wait for a couple of seconds before giving up on the element location. In case the lookup still fails after the timeout and your non-xpath locator is used then, most likely, it contains a typo, or the destination element is not present. There is not much that could be done in UIA2 to change/influence that, since it passes such lookup calls directly to Google's UiAutomator framework.

In case of xpath locators you could try to change values of the following settings:

  1. allowInvisibleElements
  2. ignoreUnimportantViews
  3. enableMultiWindows

By default, the first setting is set to false, which hides elements that are not visible from the page source and from the xpath location. Changing the setting value to true would add such invisible elements to the page source and make them locatable.

The second one is enabled by default (e.g. true). By disabling it the page source could receive more elements that are normally hidden, because of their unimportance.

The third setting being set to true extends the page source by adding the actual content of other windows that are currently present on the device's screen. For example, the on-screen keyboard in Android is not a part of the current app hierarchy, but rather belongs to a separate window.

In case of id locators you could try to change the value of the following setting:

  1. disableIdLocatorAutocompletion

The general resources naming convention for Android apps is <app_id>:id/<resource_name>. This should guarantee uniqueness of each identifier accross the user interface. Although, this is only a convention and it is still allowed to have various resource names that do not follow it. If you have gotten one of such applications for automated testing then consider assigning disableIdLocatorAutocompletion setting value to true, so UiAutomator2 driver does not automatically rewrite supplied id values by adding <app_id>:id/ prefixes to them.

Warning Default values for settings above have been selected to optimize xpath lookup and page source generation performance. Having these settings always different from their default values may sometimes significantly (especially in case of huge accessbility hierarchies) reduce xpath lookup and page source generation speed.

Warning All items above are settings, not capabilities.

ClassCastException: java.util.ArrayList$ListItr cannot be cast to org.eclipse.wst.xml.xpath2.processor

This exception happens due to a known bug in the Eclipse's Psychopath library used by UiAutomator2 driver to support XPath2 syntax. The issue has been observed while using following:: or preceding:: axes in xpath queries. Unfortunately, this library has not been maintained for quite a while, and there is no good open source alternative to it. The only known workaround would be to forcefully switch the driver's XPath processor to the standard Android's Apache Harmony-based XPath1, which does not have this issue (but also does not support XPath2 syntax). See the Appium issue #16142 for more details.

A gesture, like scroll or swipe, does not have any effect / It is unclear how to do it

The UiAutomator2 driver provides multiple options for touch gestures automation. For simple gestures, like swipe, scroll, drag, double click, fling or pinch use the corresponding gesture shortcuts. You may also use UiScrollable-based UiAutomator locators to automate various scrolling behaviours. For more sophisticated gestures consider using W3C actions.

Make sure you don't use deprecated JWP touch actions APIs. They have been removed from the UIA2 driver since version 3.

If the action code in the client source looks good and satisfies the above requirements, but its execution still does not deliver the expected result then the following debugging meassures might be applied:

Check the below tutorials for more details on how to build reliable action chains:

window/tab hanlding in WEBVIEW context implemented by chrome custom tabs

Chrome custom tabs could have its own window handlings as same as regular Selenium Web automation.

Appium lets you switch the context from NATIVE_APP to WEBVIEW_xyz, for example, to interact with the WEBVIEW contents over chromedriver. Then, if the WEBVIEW was chrome custom tabs implementation, the WEBVIEW context may require you to switch the window handler properly to interact with contents in a handler. It is worth to try out this idea if chrome://inspect or mobile: getContexts shows you available pages more than availale contexts.

# Ruby
# Change the context to WebView (Attach to a chromedriver session)
driver.set_context('WEBVIEW_XYZ')

# Get available tabs/windows in the chrome instance
driver.window_handles

# Change the tab/window in the "chrome" instance
driver.switch_to.window('a window_handle name')

# interact with the tab/window

Usage Examples

# Python3 + PyTest
import pytest

from appium import webdriver
# Options are available in Python client since v2.6.0
from appium.options.android import UiAutomator2Options

def generate_options():
    common_caps = {
        # A real device udid could be retrieved from `adb devices -l` output
        # If it is ommitted then the first available device will be used
        'appium:udid': '123456',
        # ...or run the test on an emulator
        # 'appium:avd': 'emulator-5554',
    }
    app_options = UiAutomator2Options().load_capabilities(common_caps)
    app_options.app = '/Projects/myapp.apk'
    # It might also be necessary to provide more info about app activities
    # Read [How To Troubleshoot Activities Startup](docs/activity-startup.md)
    # for more details
    # app_options.appPackage = 'com.mypackage'
    # app_options.appActivity = '.myMainActivity'
    # app_options.appWaitActivity = '.mySplashScreenActivity'
    chrome_options = UiAutomator2Options().load_capabilities(common_caps)
    chrome_options.browser_name = 'chrome'
    # Read [Hybrid Mode](#hybrid-mode)
    chrome_options.chromedriver_executable = '/Project/chromedriver_linux64'
    return [app_options, chrome_options]

@pytest.fixture(params=generate_options())
def driver(request):
    # The default URL is http://127.0.0.1:4723/wd/hub in Appium1
    drv = webdriver.Remote('http://localhost:4723', options=request.param)
    yield drv
    drv.quit()

def test_edit_text(driver):
    locator = 'android.view.TextEdit' if driver.current_context == 'NATIVE_APP' else 'input'
    edit_field = driver.find_element_by_class_name(locator)
    edit_field.send_keys('hello world')
    assert edit_field.text == 'hello world'
    edit_field.clear()
    assert edit_field.text == ''

API Notes

lock behaves differently in Android than it does in iOS. In Android it does not take any arguments, and locks the screen and returns immediately.

Development

npm install appium-uiautomator2-driver
npm run watch

Unit tests:

npm run test

Functional tests:

npm run e2e-test