Support for Selenium 4

[lawcrens]

Hello,

Wanted to request that WinAppDriver is supported on Selenium 4. Selenium 3 has been deprecated for a year

[pm90pl]

What do you exactly mean by 'Selenium 4 support '? WinAppDriver implements W3 WebDriver standard. Selenium 4 is a client implementation that consumes W3 WebDriver API.

[lawcrens]

I and many others have been getting an error when running WinAppDriver.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/74632066/appium-winappdriver-and-selenium-4

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72921159/winappdriver-reference-to-type-ifindsbytagname-claims-it-is-defined-in-webdr

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/74138893/selenium-4-not-compatible-with-winappdriver

The consensus is that WinAppDriver is not compatible with Selenium 4. If this is not the case, do you know how can this can be troubleshooted?

[DLightstone]

One may stand to gain by considering WinAppDriver to be a moot which serves to protect Microsoft from firms that would like to nibble at their market positions (ie a product entrance barrier)

A moot does not have to be supported and isn't.

I would consider converting the application into something that can be tested without using WinAppDriver, you have tom protect your investment from obsolescence

You can learn a lot about motivation and transparency by posting a comment that some might erroneously consider disparaging

[PavanMudigondaTR]

I have the same question ! Please someone from Microsoft please answer !

[farnsword]

Hey everyone. Can anyone advise if it is going to happen? It is a kind of blocker.

[pm90pl]

Yeah. So, the current version is not compatible with W3C WebDriver standard what makes it incompatible with Selenium 4. There is no clear roadmap for WAD and it's not open source so you have to deal it on your own. Upgrading Selenium without checking WAD compatibility was a mistake. Sorry.

[farnsword]

Well, at this point I only need to update the selenium version to 4.0 as using the latest Chrome version requires Selenium v4, so I stuck with Chrome v95. As a last resort - this repository is under an MIT license which allows forking and modification, so may try to build our own version of it. Thanks for the answer.

[pm90pl]

But this repo contains only examples, not WinAppDriver implementation.

[farnsword]

Oh my...thanks for pointing that out. Tough luck then.

[PavanMudigondaTR]

I have this email address of Microsoft team winappdriverteam@microsoft.com

[d2a-raudenaerde]

Has anybody sent them an email yet?

[DLightstone]

The dear folks at Microsoft read the postings.

To determine it for yourself, post a disparaging comment and wait for it to be hidden or deleted

No reply means minimal support or no support

[PavanMudigondaTR]

Sent. I request everyone to send a email. To save time you can copy and send the below.

winappdriverteam@microsoft.com

Hi WinAppDriver Team at Microsoft,

Thanks for all the great work so far!

We are looking for support for Selenium 4 Java for WinAppDriver. We would appreciate if someone could look at this thread and respond back on your plans !

https://github.com/microsoft/WinAppDriver/issues/1839#issuecomment-1382019123a

[d2a-raudenaerde]

@PavanMudigondaTR thanks for the template!. Would you please edit it and add 'Thanks for all the great work so far!' as first line? Thanks :)

[nguyenquangtay]

sent also, thanks! :)

[dmridul1827]

thanks everyone for bringing it up. I am also facing same issue while migrating winappdriver to work with Sel 4.

Any further update or resolution, anyone has? Would be grateful!

[ShinjiruPP]

Are there some updates??? About Selenium4 + WinAppDriver ?? It is blocker for the new development about Test Automation framework.

[DLightstone]

ShinjiruPP Generally speaking I would interpret an absence of a reply to mean - no updates planed

The preferred development environment is the one that works, not the one which uses the lasted and greatest infrastructure.

This may mean having to manually test things that are not present in the old infrastructure.

[StavHayounNoiberg]

Any updates or answer from Microsoft regarding this issue?

[fastinggirl]

Any update on this?

[sunrise-soft]

Hi there! Seem this is an abandoned project :( I just wonder does Microsoft apply test automation for their Desktop applications and if yes, which one they're using

[RamaNarasimhaChanda]

Hi All, Since we are not having update from micro soft on this . What is the alternative approach other's are using can you please share.

[daluu]

Well, obviously, for this issue, I can think of 2 workarounds/alternatives:

• don't use Selenium 4 while using WinAppDriver, until a fix is available if ever (so stay on Selenium 3 or 2, etc.). For this particular issue, if you need to use Selenium 4, maybe use dual approach and dual version dependency management. Use Selenium 4 for web/mobile automation, then use Selenium 3 for now for desktop automation, within your test framework.

• look into WinAppDriver alternative tools (there are some), and see which of those support (1) WebDriver API/protocol, and (2) Selenium 4 version of the protocol.

There are alternative tools mentioned in various comments in #1550, and I sort of compiled a list in https://github.com/Accruent/robotframework-applicationlibrary/issues/72#issuecomment-1745389341

[AG-QALab]

• Install Nodejs and WinAppDriver
• Install Appium 2+ version : npm i -g appium
• Install appium windows driver : appium driver install --source=npm appium-windows-driver
• run appium command
• execute the scripts

Its working.

[alatriste1982]

Any update from MS on this one?