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UiAutomator Driver for Android
From a long time, Appium’s older support for automating Android apps is through UiAutomator driver. Further, This driver leverages Google’s UiAutomator technology to launch automation sessions on a device.
Development of the UiAutomator driver happens at the appium-android-driver repo.
We recommend you upgrade to the UiAutomator2 Driver and use that driver instead, since this driver will not be supported moving forward.
Requirements and Support
In addition to Appium’s general requirements:
- Java 7 installed and configured correctly for your platform
- Mac, Windows, or Linux OS with the ability to run the Android SDK
Usage
The way to start a session using the UiAutomator driver is to include the platformName capability in your new session request, with the value Android. Of course, you must also include appropriate platformVersion, deviceName, and app capabilities, at a minimum. In the case of this driver, no automationName capability should be used.
It is highly recommended to also set the appPackage and appActivity capabilities in order to let Appium know exactly which package and activity should be launched for your application. Otherwise, Appium will try to determine these automatically from your app manifest.
Capabilities
The UiAutomator driver supports a number of standard Appium capabilities, but has an additional set of capabilities that modulate the behavior of the driver. These can be found currently at the Android section of the aforementioned doc.
For web tests, to automate Chrome instead of your own application, leave the app capability empty and instead set the browserName capability to Chrome. Note that you are responsible for ensuring that Chrome is on the emulator/device, and that it is of a version compatible with Chromedriver.
Commands
To see the various commands Appium supports, and specifically for information on how the commands map to behaviors for the UiAutomator driver.
Setup
Given that the setup instructions for this driver and the newer UiAutomator2 Driver are identical, please refer to the system, emulator, and device setup instructions on the UiAutomator2 Driver doc.
