To help you get started, we've collected the most common ways that appium-uiautomator2-driver is being used within popular public projects.

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).

Doctor

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

Capabilities

General

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

Driver/Server

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

App

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

App Localization

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

ADB

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

Emulator (Android Virtual Device)

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

App Signing

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

Device Locking

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

MJPEG

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

Web Context

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

Other

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

Element Attributes

UiAutomator2 driver supports the following element attributes:

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

Element Location

UiAutomator2 driver supports the following location strategies:

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

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

BiDi Protocol Support

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

Parallel Tests

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

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

Important Real Device Capabilities

• 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. false by default
elementResponseAttributes	string	Comma-separated list of element attribute names to be included into findElement response. By default only element UUID is present there, but it is also possible to add the following items: name, text, rect, enabled, displayed, selected, attribute/. It is required that shouldUseCompactResponses setting is set to false in order for this one to apply.
enableMultiWindows	boolean	Whether to include all windows that the user can interact with (for example an on-screen keyboard) while building the XML page source (true). By default it is false and only the single active application window is included to the page source.
enableTopmostWindowFromActivePackage	boolean	Whether to limit the window with the highest Z-order from the active package for interactions and page source retrieval. By default it is false and the active application window, which may not necessarily have this order, is included to the page source.
enableNotificationListener	boolean	Whether to enable (true) toast notifications listener to listen for new toast notifications. By default this listener is enabled and UiAutomator2 server includes the text of toast messages to the generated XML page source, but not for longer than 3500 ms after the corresponding notification expires.
keyInjectionDelay	long	Delay in milliseconds between key presses when injecting text input. 0 ms by default
scrollAcknowledgmentTimeout	long	Timeout for waiting for an acknowledgement of an uiautomator scroll swipe action. The acknowledgment is an AccessibilityEvent, corresponding to the scroll action, that lets the framework determine if the scroll action was successful. Generally, this timeout should not be modified. 200 ms by default
shouldUseCompactResponses	boolean	Used in combination with elementResponseAttributes setting. If set to false then the findElement response is going to include the items enumerated in elementResponseAttributes setting. true by default
waitForIdleTimeout	long	Timeout used for waiting for the user interface to go into an idle state. By default, all core uiautomator objects except UiDevice will perform this wait before starting to search for the widget specified by the object's locator. Once the idle state is detected or the timeout elapses (whichever occurs first), the object will start to wait for the selector to find a match. Consider lowering the value of this setting if you experience long delays while interacting with accessibility elements in your test. 10000 ms by default.
waitForSelectorTimeout	long	Timeout for waiting for a widget to become visible in the user interface so that it can be matched by a selector. Because user interface content is dynamic, sometimes a widget may not be visible immediately and won't be detected by a selector. This timeout allows the uiautomator framework to wait for a match to be found, up until the timeout elapses. This timeout is only applied to android uiautomator location strategy. 10000 ms by default
normalizeTagNames	boolean	Being set to true applies unicode-to-ascii normalization of element class names used as tag names in the page source XML document. This is necessary if the application under test has some Unicode class names, which cannot be used as XML tag names by default due to known bugs in Android's XML DOM parser implementation. false by default
shutdownOnPowerDisconnect	boolean	Whether to shutdown the server if the device under test is disconnected from a power source (e. g. stays on battery power). true by default.
simpleBoundsCalculation	boolean	Whether to calculate element bounds as absolute values (true) or check if the element is covered by other elements and thus partially hidden (false, the default behaviour). Setting this setting to true helps to improve the performance of XML page source generation, but decreases bounds preciseness. Use with care.
trackScrollEvents	boolean	Whether to apply scroll events tracking (true, the default value), so the server could calculate the value of contentSize attribute. Having this setting enabled may add delays to all scrolling actions.
wakeLockTimeout	long	The timeout in milliseconds of wake lock that UiAutomator2 server acquires by default to prevent the device under test going to sleep while an automated test is running. By default the server acquires the lock for 24 hours. Setting this value to zero forces the server to release the wake lock.
serverPort	int	The number of the port on the remote device to start UiAutomator2 server on. Do not mix this with systemPort, which is acquired on the host machine. Must be in range 1024..65535. 6790 by default
mjpegServerPort	int	The number of the port on the remote device to start MJPEG screenshots broadcaster on. Must be in range 1024..65535. 7810 by default
mjpegServerFramerate	int	The maximum count of screenshots per second taken by the MJPEG screenshots broadcaster. Must be in range 1..60. 10 by default
mjpegScalingFactor	int	The percentage value used to apply downscaling on the screenshots generated by the MJPEG screenshots broadcaster. Must be in range 1..100. 50 is by default, which means that screenshots are downscaled to the half of their original size keeping their original proportions.
mjpegServerScreenshotQuality	int	The percentage value used to apply lossy JPEG compression on the screenshots generated by the MJPEG screenshots broadcaster. Must be in range 1..100. 50 is by default, which means that screenshots are compressed to the half of their original quality.
mjpegBilinearFiltering	boolean	Controls whether (true) or not (false, the default value) to apply bilinear filtering to MJPEG screenshots broadcaster resize algorithm. Enabling this flag may improve the quality of the resulting scaled bitmap, but may introduce a small performance hit.
useResourcesForOrientationDetection	boolean	Defines the strategy used by UiAutomator2 server to detect the original device orientation. By default (false value) the server uses device rotation value for this purpose. Although, this approach may not work for some devices and a portrait orientation may erroneously be detected as the landscape one (and vice versa). In such case it makes sense to play with this setting.
enforceXPath1	boolean	Since UiAutomator2 driver version 4.25.0 XPath2 is set as the default and the recommended interpreter for the corresponding element locators. This interpreter is based on Psychopath XPath2 implementation, which is now a part of the Eclipse foundation. In most of the cases XPath1 locators are also valid XPath2 locators, so there should be no issues while locating elements. Although, since the XPath2 standard is much more advanced in comparison to the previous version, some issues are possible for more sophisticated locators, which cannot be fixed easily, as we depend on the third-party library mentioned above. Then try to workaround such issues by enforcing XPath1 usage (whose implementation is a part of the Android platform itself) and assigning this setting to true. Note, this setting is actually applied at the time when the element lookup by XPath is executed, so you could switch it on or off whenever needed throughout your automated testing session.
limitXPathContextScope	boolean	Due to historical reasons UiAutomator2 driver limits scopes of element context-based searches to the parent element. This means a request like findElement(By.xpath, "//root").findElement(By.xpath, "./..") would always fail, because the driver only collects descendants of the root element for the destination XML source. The limitXPathContextScope setting being set to false changes that default behavior, so the collected page source includes the whole page source XML where root node is set as the search context. With that setting disabled the search query above should not fail anymore. Although, you must still be careful while building XPath requests for context-based searches with the limitXPathContextScope setting set to false. A request like findElement(By.xpath, "//root").findElement(By.xpath, "//element") would ignore the current context and search for element trough the whole page source. Use . notation to correct that behavior and only find element nodes which are descendants of the root node: findElement(By.xpath, "//root").findElement(By.xpath, ".//element").
disableIdLocatorAutocompletion	boolean	According to internal Android standards it is expected that each resource identifier is prefixed with :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.
snapshotMaxDepth	int	The number of maximum depth for the source tree snapshot. The default value is 70. This number should be in range [1, 500]. A part of the elements source tree might be lost if the value is too low. Also, StackOverflowError might be caused if the value is too high (Issues 12545, 12892). The available driver version is 2.27.0 or higher.

Platform-Specific Extensions

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

// Java 11+
var result = driver.executeScript("mobile: ", Map.ofEntries(
    Map.entry("arg1", "value1"),
    Map.entry("arg2", "value2")
    // you may add more pairs if needed or skip providing the map completely
    // if all arguments are defined as optional
));

// WebdriverIO
const result = await driver.executeScript('mobile: ', [{
    arg1: "value1",
    arg2: "value2",
}]);

# Python
result = driver.execute_script('mobile: ', {
    'arg1': 'value1',
    'arg2': 'value2',
})

# Ruby
result = @driver.execute_script 'mobile: ', {
    arg1: 'value1',
    arg2: 'value2',
}

// Dotnet
object result = driver.ExecuteScript("mobile: ", new Dictionary() {
    {"arg1", "value1"},
    {"arg2", "value2"}
});

mobile: shell

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

Arguments

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

Returned Result

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

mobile: execEmuConsoleCommand

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

Arguments

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

Returned Result

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

Mobile Gesture Commands

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

• 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: deviceidle

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

Arguments

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

mobile: acceptAlert

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

Arguments

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

mobile: dismissAlert

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

Arguments

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

mobile: batteryInfo

Retrieves the battery information from the device under test.

Returned Result

The extension returns a dictionary whose entries are:

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

mobile: deviceInfo

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

Returned Result

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

mobile: getDeviceTime

Retrieves the current device's timestamp.

Arguments

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

Returned Result

The device timestamp string formatted according to the given specifiers

mobile: changePermissions

Changes package permissions in runtime.

Arguments

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

mobile: getPermissions

Gets runtime permissions list for the given application package.

Arguments

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

Returned Result

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

mobile: performEditorAction

Performs IME action on the currently focused edit element.

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

Arguments

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

mobile: startScreenStreaming

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

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
width	number	no	The scaled width of the device's screen. If unset then the script will assign it to the actual screen width measured in pixels.	768
height	number	no	The scaled height of the device's screen. If unset then the script will assign it to the actual screen height measured in pixels.	1024
bitRate	number	no	The video bit rate for the video, in bits per second. The default value is 4000000 (4 Mb/s). You can increase the bit rate to improve video quality, but doing so results in larger movie files.	1024000
host	string	no	The IP address/host name to start the MJPEG server on. You can set it to 0.0.0.0 to trigger the broadcast on all available network interfaces. 127.0.0.1 by default	0.0.0.0
pathname	string	no	The HTTP request path the MJPEG server should be available on. If unset then any pathname on the given host/port combination will work. Note that the value should always start with a single slash: /	/myserver
tcpPort	number	no	The port number to start the internal TCP MJPEG broadcast on. Thi