appium-uiautomator2-driver

What is appium-uiautomator2-driver?

The appium-uiautomator2-driver is an npm package that provides a driver for Appium to automate Android applications using the UIAutomator2 framework. It allows for the automation of various tasks on Android devices, such as interacting with UI elements, performing gestures, and retrieving device information.

What are appium-uiautomator2-driver's main functionalities?

Finding Elements

This feature allows you to find UI elements on the screen using different locators such as ID, class name, XPath, etc.

const { AndroidUiautomator2Driver } = require('appium-uiautomator2-driver');
const driver = new AndroidUiautomator2Driver();
await driver.findElement('id', 'com.example:id/button');

Performing Gestures

This feature allows you to perform various touch gestures like tap, swipe, and pinch on the device.

const { AndroidUiautomator2Driver } = require('appium-uiautomator2-driver');
const driver = new AndroidUiautomator2Driver();
await driver.performTouchAction({
  action: 'tap',
  options: { element: 'com.example:id/button' }
});

Retrieving Device Information

This feature allows you to retrieve information about the device, such as its model, manufacturer, and OS version.

const { AndroidUiautomator2Driver } = require('appium-uiautomator2-driver');
const driver = new AndroidUiautomator2Driver();
const deviceInfo = await driver.getDeviceInfo();
console.log(deviceInfo);

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webdriverio

WebdriverIO is a popular automation framework that supports multiple platforms, including web and mobile. It provides a high-level API for interacting with web and mobile applications. Compared to appium-uiautomator2-driver, WebdriverIO offers a more comprehensive solution for cross-platform automation.

detox

Detox is an end-to-end testing framework for mobile applications. It is designed to test React Native apps but can also be used with native apps. Detox focuses on providing a fast and reliable testing experience. Compared to appium-uiautomator2-driver, Detox is more specialized for React Native and offers better integration with the React Native ecosystem.

README

Appium UiAutomator2 Driver

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:

• Windows, Linux and macOS are supported as hosts
• Android SDK Platform tools must be installed. Android Studio IDE also provides a convenient UI to install and manage the tools.
• ANDROID_HOME or ANDROID_SDK_ROOT environment variable must be set
• Java JDK must be installed and JAVA_HOME environment variable must be set. Android SDK below API 30 requires Java 8. Android SDK 30 and above requires Java 9 or newer.
• Emulator platform image must be installed if you plan to run your tests on it. Android Studio IDE also provides a convenient UI to install and manage emulators.
• Real Android devices must have USB debugging enabled and should be visible as online in adb devices -l output.
• The minimum version of Android API must be 5.0 (API level 21) (6.0 is recommended as version 5 has some known compatibility issues).

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 the UiAutomator2 server is listening on. 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. 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
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. 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. 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. Example: EN, JA

ADB

Capability Name	Description
appium:adbPort	Number of the port 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. Could be useful on some devices, where access to these policies has been locked by its vendor. false 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 Appium will skip the mocked location provider setup procedure. 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.

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). By default UiAutomator2 driver tries to detect if the device's screen is locked 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 devices under test.
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'. Setting it to 'uiautomator' will enforce the driver to avoid using special ADB shortcuts in order to speed up the unlock procedure.
appium:unlockSuccessTimeout	Maximum number of milliseconds to wait until the device is unlocked. 2000 ms by default

MJPEG

Capability Name	Description
appium:mjpegServerPort	The number of the port 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:skipLogCapture	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.

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'
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. 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).	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	'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"]")

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

• udid: The unique device id.
• systemPort: Set a unique system port number for each parallel session. Otherwise you might get a port conflict such as in this issue.
• chromedriverPort: The unique chromedriver port if testing web views or Chrome.
• mjpegServerPort: Set a unique MJPEG server port for each parallel session if you are going to record a video.

Important Emulator Capabilities

• avd: The unique emulator name.
• systemPort: Set a unique system port number for each parallel session.
• chromedriverPort: The unique chromedriver port (if testing web views or Chrome).
• mjpegServerPort: Set a unique MJPEG server port for each parallel session if you are going to record a video.

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. true 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.
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 port number to start UiAutomator2 server on. Do not mix this with the systemPort, because this port is being acquired on the remote device under test rather than on the host machine. Must be in range 1024..65535. 6790 by default
mjpegServerPort	int	The port number 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 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 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.

Platform-Specific Extensions

Beside of standard W3C APIs the driver provides the following custom command extensions to execute platform specific scenarios:

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:

• mobile: dragGesture
• mobile: flingGesture
• mobile: doubleClickGesture
• mobile: clickGesture
• mobile: longClickGesture
• mobile: pinchCloseGesture
• mobile: pinchOpenGesture
• mobile: swipeGesture
• mobile: scrollGesture

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: 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

Examples

// Java
driver.executeScript("mobile: performEditorAction", ImmutableMap.of("action", "Go"));

# Python
driver.execute_script('mobile: performEditorAction', {'action': 'previous'})

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. 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: 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":"[phone]",
       "person":null,
       "date":"1581936422203",
       "read":"0",
       "status":"-1",
       "type":"1",
       "subject":null,
       "body":"\"text message2\"",
       "serviceCenter":null
     },
     {
       "id":"1",
       "address":"[phone]",
       "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

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:

• The app is not installed: 0
• The app is installed and is not running: 1
• The app is running in background: 3
• The app is running in foreground: 4

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

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.

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

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 `

Returned Result

The actual stdout of the downstream am command.

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 `

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 `

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 `

Returned Result

The actual stdout of the downstream am command.

mobile: getContexts

Retrieves a webviews mapping based on CDP endpoints

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: 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: 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'}

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.

Applications Management

UiAutomator2 driver supports Appium endpoints for applications management:

• Check if app is installed (mobile: isAppInstalled)
• Install/upgrade app (mobile: installApp)
• Activate app (mobile: activateApp)
  • Since UIAutomator2 driver v2.2.0, the server calls am start/am start-activity to start the application on devices with API level 24+. monkey tool is called on devices below API level 24.
  • UIAutomator2 driver v2.1.2 and lower versions call the monkey tool on all devices.
  • The monkey tool turns on auto rotation, so please consider using mobile: startActivity if you would like to keep your current rotation preferences.
• Uninstall app (mobile: removeApp)
• Terminate app (mobile: terminateApp)
• Start app activity (mobile: startActivity)
• Query the current app state (mobile: queryAppState)

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

Useful links:

• https://appiumpro.com/editions/9-testing-android-app-upgrades
• https://github.com/appium/python-client/blob/master/appium/webdriver/extensions/applications.py
• https://github.com/appium/java-client/blob/master/src/main/java/io/appium/java_client/InteractsWithApps.java

Files Management

UiAutomator2 driver supports Appium endpoints for files management:

• Push file (mobile: pushFile)
• Pull file (mobile: pullFile)
• Pull folder (mobile: pullFolder)

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

Useful links:

• https://github.com/appium/java-client/blob/master/src/main/java/io/appium/java_client/InteractsWithFiles.java
• https://github.com/appium/python-client/blob/master/appium/webdriver/extensions/remote_fs.py

Clipboard Management

UiAutomator2 driver supports Appium endpoints for clipboard management:

• Set clipboard content (POST /appium/device/set_clipboard')
• Get clipboard content (POST /appium/device/get_clipboard)

Useful links:

• https://github.com/appium/python-client/blob/master/appium/webdriver/extensions/clipboard.py
• https://github.com/appium/java-client/blob/master/src/main/java/io/appium/java_client/clipboard/HasClipboard.java
• https://appiumpro.com/editions/16-automating-the-clipboard-on-ios-and-android

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:

• POST /session/:sessionId/context: To set the current context. The body contains a single mandatory name parameter, which has the name of the context to be set. The name of the default context is NATIVE_APP.
• GET /session/:sessionId/context: To retrieve the name of the current context
• GET /session/:sessionId/contexts: To retrieve the list of available context names
• mobile: getContexts

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 availablity 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

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

When UIA2 driver is installed it automatically downloads Chromedriver, so there is a possibility of network or other issues leading to an installation failure.

By default Chromedriver is retrieved from https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/. To use a mirror of the above URL change the value of CHROMEDRIVER_CDNURL environemnt variable:

CHROMEDRIVER_CDNURL=https://npmmirror.com/mirrors/chromedriver appium driver install uiautomator2

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

In case you would like skip the download of Chromedriver entirely, 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 experince 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 Accessiblity-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 significatly 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:

• The automation session gets unexpectedly deleted if your test code sends the DELETE /session/<id> request to the it, also the corresponding session and the server itself are terminated as a result. Sending further commands to the same server would create the error above because it is not listening anymore and must be newly started by the instrumentation first. Such issues usually happen if the session management is not configured properly in the your code, so one starts a new session while an existing one is still running and has not been quit properly, or there is a timeout while waiting for a new command. Fixing session management logic (e.g. make sure each session is being properly created in the test setup section and is terminated in the test teardown) or changing/disabling the commands timeout (check the newCommandTimeout capability) might help to address such type of errors.
• The server has been unexpectedly killed by Android OS itself. There might be several reasons to that. Usually fetching the logcat output and finding occurrences of io.appium.uiautomator2.server traces with error or exception label might help to figure out what happens. Sometimes it is necessary to turn off some internal phone optimizations, sometimes the server crashes because of an internal UiAutomator framework bug, sometimes because of a bug in the server code itself. Each case should be investigated separately if the search over the internet shows no matches…
• The connectivity between the phone and the host is unstable. Nothing much to add on this one. Maybe the phone has a defect, or the USB cable is damaged, or the installed Android SDK is out of date…

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 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.

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

Changelog

2.15.0 (2023-04-15)

Features

• Add 'mobile: getAppStrings' extension (#593) (0705269)