Update on WinAppDriver

[kat-y]

Thank you all for your patience, we hear your frustration at the lack of updates on the future of WinAppDriver. In November 2020 we mentioned that development would be paused for at least 6 months. We don’t have a timeframe of when the level of resourcing for WinAppDriver will change as our team is currently focusing on making a great platform for the future of Windows 11 apps – when there is confidence in a timeframe, we’ll definitely share it with you.

We are committed to bringing critical improvements for WinAppDriver to keep pace with other developments in the platform, so it can continue to be used alongside our other advancing technologies. One such improvement is ARM64 support in WinAppDriver v1.3 to ensure alignment with the Windows App SDK. Please feel free to contact me with any further questions or concerns!

[pradeipp]

Hi @kat-y Thank you for the updates, this really helps boost our morale and continue using WinAppDriver. Here are my questions:

1. Any updates on whether the project might go open source? or any intentions to?
2. The new build is expected to have issues(due to the shift to .net 5 and also the new platform-specific builds) so how are you planning the testing? I believe @DHowett is the sole resource in WinAppDriver at the moment...
3. And I believe there won't be a hard 6 months gap this time?

Thanks once again and hope to see frequent updates. Cheers 😊

[mrlacey]

our team is currently focusing on making a great platform for the future of Windows 11 apps

I hope we can look forward to a time when the team displays an interest in helping developers ensure their Windows 11 apps are well tested too.

[fforjan]

@kat-y there is simple PR pending from the community like #1539 or #1058

Although I understand you do not want to work heavily on this, could you open and accept some community items like the one previously set ?

[Wolfe1]

@fforjan @kat-y Agreed, at least the PR section should be looked at for now in order to capture any effort the community has done to improve documentation and such.

I have been trying to get some samples added for RobotFramework for over a year now #1148

[SnowISmirnov]

Please have a look to https://github.com/microsoft/WinAppDriver/issues/1556. It is not possible to launch new version of WinAppDriver with Appium

[steffen-wilke]

If only I had a penny for every great developer tool that has been stalled due to "more pressing features" 😄. Looking forward to more updates on this repository hope this gets some priority and the community contributions are processed.

[liljohnak]

@DHowett @kat-y This seems like it needs to be adressed. Please evaluate: https://github.com/microsoft/WinAppDriver/issues/1610

[Wolfe1]

Agreed #1610 needs to be a top priority in order to stay in line with latest Appium.

[andrisi]

@kat-y this explanation (after 6 months) and the previous ones sound like coming from a cash strapped early stage startup, not a billion dollar company. FFS, hire a few developers and get things moving, this is a critical piece of software! Have a look at the great progress, documentation & perfect developer-relations at the https://playwright.dev/ team, also at Microsoft. When you abandon software like this you make developers disillusioned with native Windows apps, and thus moving to develop using other tools. Remember this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs

[andrisi]

FYI: https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/10291 - perhaps the two teams could join forces?

[LYDE1234]

@kat-y Hi Katy - my company is considering a move to Selenium w/WinAppDriver for desktop testing. We're of course interested in the long term viability of WinAppDriver and need a clear picture of what the situation current and future is. Any way of getting in touch with you directly? feel free to mail me at lay at milestone.dk

[liljohnak]

@kat-y @DHowett This is odd and has caused some confusion. Perhaps it can be added to your plans. Using Selenium in msedgedriver.exe .FindElementsByXPath("*") can be used to find children elements but, here the equivalent syntax is .FindElementsByXPath("*/*"). https://github.com/microsoft/WinAppDriver/issues/669#issuecomment-938144641

[anunay1]

@kat-y Any update when can we expect the open issues to be addressed.

[ChristoWolf]

Hi @kat-y!

I'm bumping this again to check on the current state of the project.

If there are insufficient resources on your team or even in any case, it would be great if the source for WinAppDriver itself would be made public so that the community can start maintaining the project.

Edit: Maybe I should give a few reasons why maintaining this project is important for many consumers:

• WinAppDriver is largely satisfying the W3C WebDriver standards and thus may be used similarly to other WebDrivers (e.g. the various Selenium WebDrivers and Appium).
• This also means that it is easily possible to provide API wrappers which are platform and WebDriver independent due to API agnosticism.
• WinAppDriver is officially supported as a relay in Selenium Grid 4.
• This means that Selenium Grid 4 can be used to easily distribute and parallelize Windows desktop application UI tests.
• As the official MSDN doc states, Coded UI Test is deprecated and WinAppDriver should be used instead.

[jozefizso]

We are Visual Studio Enterprise subscription customers. The Coded UI Tests functionality was discontinued for the benefit of using Appium and WinAppDriver.

So we are currently stuck with a project where we cannot even know if it ever will be developed in the future?

[andrisi]

FYI: I wrote to about 4-5 main committers of this repo at MS asking for an update. Two of those bounce.

Update: no one answered.

[DLightstone]

When, if at all, will the source code be made public? Clearly Microsoft is not addressing issues presented in this status update thread.

[zannett]

Any update as to when any focus will be put back on enhancing the WinAppDriver, resolving existing issues, or making this an open source project?

[Wolfe1]

[zannett]

[aronweiler]

I would like to pile on here and ask what, if anything, is going to be the automated testing solution for Windows UI applications now that CodedUI is deprecated, and it appears that WinAppDriver is no longer being supported.

Microsoft leaving people high and dry here...

[ChristoWolf]

It would be so easy if WinAppDriver itself were open source. @kat-y: You mentioned some time ago that you guys were looking into open sourcing the code, are there any news regarding this, or an ETA?

[PandaMagnus]

I would like to pile on here and ask what, if anything, is going to be the automated testing solution for Windows UI applications now that CodedUI is deprecated, and it appears that WinAppDriver is no longer being supported.

Microsoft leaving people high and dry here...

FlaUI? I've used it very briefly in the past and seems to be a decent alternative. IIRC it's also open source.

I suppose there's always direct UIA coding, but I definitely missed some of the niceties from WAD and FlAUI.

[daluu]

I would like to pile on here and ask what, if anything, is going to be the automated testing solution for Windows UI applications now that CodedUI is deprecated, and it appears that WinAppDriver is no longer being supported. Microsoft leaving people high and dry here...

FlaUI? I've used it very briefly in the past and seems to be a decent alternative. IIRC it's also open source.

I suppose there's always direct UIA coding, but I definitely missed some of the niceties from WAD and FlAUI.

and FlaUI has open discussion/suggestion for interfacing to Selenium/WebDriver. Unfortunately, there's been no real work on it. In case anyone is interested or can contribute in that area.

https://github.com/FlaUI/FlaUI/issues/50

[stevensmaria22]

It's been more than a year now, when can we expect a new release? Please let us know as we have moved towards WinAppDriver, no release for an year, makes us worrisome about our decision.

[ChristoWolf]

I'll also ping @kat-y again. It would be so great if you guys would open source WinAppDriver, I would love to contribute!

@kat-y's activity on Twitter has also stopped at the end of 2021, so I'm not sure whom to contact otherwise.

[anunay1]

I would like to pile on here and ask what, if anything, is going to be the automated testing solution for Windows UI applications now that CodedUI is deprecated, and it appears that WinAppDriver is no longer being supported. Microsoft leaving people high and dry here...

FlaUI? I've used it very briefly in the past and seems to be a decent alternative. IIRC it's also open source.

I suppose there's always direct UIA coding, but I definitely missed some of the niceties from WAD and FlAUI.

what's IIRC?

[alex-chung]

@anunay1 IIRC = If I recall correctly

[daluu]

Is there a way to inquire from Microsoft who to contact about this? Maybe starting from the top executives as needed, and any public communications channels of Microsoft?

Who's the head of MS Open Source initiatives?

[ChristoWolf]

Maybe @DHowett has more info?

[Fengtao1314520]

it seems this project was dead, in face, we still some tool to test desktop application, when this project was active and many people using it, we think it can be make a standard library , but now, i have to found other tool to test our desktop applicaiton.

[igorrecioh]

I am planning to migrate to FlaUI. I have been doing some PoCs with it and it makes what I need, furthermore, it is quite faster.

I can't understand why MS is forgetting WAD. I can't imaging how many windows apps are being developed now in the world and still without a good UI testing tool provided by MS.

[anunay1]

Is FlaUI actively maintained, Will it work with UWP apps.

[igorrecioh]

Is FlaUI actively maintained, Will it work with UWP apps.

Well, "actively maintained". Last commit 3 months ago and 3.2.0 Nuget is from 2020 July.

Nuget is not working fine so I have forked master and generate a new Nuget.

Not sure if UWP app is supported, sorry

[jrnewton]

Paging @DHowett and @kat-y. Who is in charge of this project? Can we get an update?

[jrnewton]

Paging also past committers @timotiusmargo , @yodurr , @paulcam206 - who is in charge of WinAppDriver? Can we get an update on #1550?

[CT4nk3r]

It's quite worrisome that there is absolutely no update on this repository for almost two years now. With the amount of PRs that would be great additions it is annoying.

[ChristoWolf]

[Wolfe1]

[igorrecioh]

Is FlaUI actively maintained, Will it work with UWP apps.

Well, "actively maintained". Last commit 3 months ago and 3.2.0 Nuget is from 2020 July.

Nuget is not working fine so I have forked master and generate a new Nuget.

Not sure if UWP app is supported, sorry

New NuGet from FlaUI, FYI. Version 4.0.0, .NET6 compatible. Seems to be active again

[Xypla]

FlaUI is sadly missing the W3C webdirver but winapdriver is also missing it so ...

[ChristoWolf]

FlaUI is sadly missing the W3C webdirver but winapdriver is also missing it so ...

If I remember all endpoints correctly, WinAppDriver actually implements the W3C WebDriver specs.

[PandaMagnus]

Not sure why FlaUI needs to implement anything around WebDriver? The brief bit I've worked with it, it works fine without it.

[ChristoWolf]

It doesn't need to, it's just that WebDrivers are more flexible because they can be targeted with any compliant client.

[daluu]

FlaUI with WebDriver interface, from a user perspective would simplify the test automation. You can use single/same API to test web, desktop, mobile. Simplify the code deployment and the learning curve for the test coding. It's a different story if you work solely on desktop automation.

[ChristoWolf]

Exactly.

[PandaMagnus]

Understood, and agreed to an extent. That was one of the reasons I recommended WinAppDriver when it officially released. But if this is going to be unmaintained and not open sourced, there aren't many other options left. Plus, the learning curve on FlaUI wasn't so high compared to other desktop automation tools (Coded UI, TestStack White, HP QuickTestPro/UFT,) so if it means I at least have an opportunity to help maintain the tool with FlaUI, that's worth it to me for new projects. Unless anything changes here, I'd recommend checking out its capabilities.

[igorrecioh]

Totally agree with @PandaMagnus, in fact I am migrating all my scripts to FlaUI. It is totally unacceptable what Microsoft is doing with WinAppDriver and I am not speaking about pushing new code, but keep the community informed. It is crazy not to have an official test tool working and updated...

[andrisi]

https://nutjs.dev/ - not a direct replacement, not exactly the same functionality, but might be useful for some purposes, instead of this abandoned WinAppDriver mess

[jrnewton]

Looks interesting but not sure it's a real alternative to WinAppDriver because it doesn't seem to have native Windows UI integration and instead focuses on computer vision and mouse/keyboard automation...