Appium Desktop
Appium Desktop is an app for Mac, Windows, and Linux which gives you the power of the Appium automation server in a beautiful and flexible UI. It is a combination of a few Appium-related tools:
- A graphical interface for the Appium Server. You can set options, start/stop the server, see logs, etc... You also don't need to use Node/NPM to install Appium, as the Node runtime comes bundled with Appium Desktop.
- An Inspector that you can use to look at your app's elements, get basic information about them, and perform basic interactions with them. This is useful as a way to learn about Appium or as a way to learn about your app so you can write tests for it.
Download Appium Desktop
You can always pick up the latest release at our
Release page on
GitHub.
If you're on Windows or macOS, Appium Desktop will automatically provide you
with updated versions of the app when they are released. If you encounter
a problem updating, simply delete or uninstall the app and re-download the
latest from the link above.
Note that Appium Desktop is not the same thing as Appium. Appium Desktop is
a graphical frontend to Appium with additional tools. Appium Desktop is
released on its own cadence and has its own versioning system. If you are
reporting an issue with Appium Desktop, always be sure to include both the
version of Appium Desktop and the version of the Appium Server which is in use
(see below).
If you're on macOS, you will need to install Appium Desktop by copying the app
from the downloaded DMG file to your own file system (the best place is the
"Applications" folder). Running Appium from in side the attached DMG itself is
not supported, and will not work.
Known Issues
- Some Windows 10 Users experience a
PathTooLongException when installing the EXE. The workaround for this is to update the setting on Windows to enable long paths
Usage Instructions
These instructions assume you are already familiar with Appium and
Appium-related concepts. If you are new to Appium, please visit
appium.io and read our introductory material.
This app provides a convenient way to download and run the Appium automation
server, as well as a tool for inspecting your Android or iOS application. Its
various capabilities are described in the following sections.
The server start window
Starting a simple server
When you open Appium Desktop, you are greeted with the server start window. The
basic option is to start an Appium server with all its defaults and the ability
to modify the host and port. The start button will also let you know which
version of the Appium server you are running, which can be useful when
reporting issues to the Appium team.
Starting a server with advanced options
By clicking on the 'Advanced' tab, you have the ability to set all the server
flags that are available in Appium. This is for advanced users and should only
be modified after consulting the Appium documentation.
Server presets
If you use the advanced server options, you have the ability to save
a configuration for later use. Simply save the preset on the 'Advanced' tab,
and you will subsequently be able to recall and start the server with that
configuration from the 'Preset' tab.
The server console output window
Once you start the server, it will launch on the host and port you specified,
and open a new window displaying the server log output.
This is fairly straightforward and no real interaction is possible, beyond
using the button to stop the server. You can also copy-and-paste the logs from
this window which is useful in reporting Appium issues.
One other button is available: 'Start New Session'. Clicking this will open up
the New Session window enabling you to start an Inspector session on the
currently-running server.
The New Session window
The New Session window allows you to construct a set of Appium desired
capabilities used to launch an Appium session. You can launch a session against
the currently-running Appium Desktop server (which is the default), or you can
launch a session against a variety of other endpoints.
Since it's not required to run against Appium Desktop's own server, you can get
to the New Session window without starting an Appium Desktop server. Simply go
to "File" (Windows/Linux) or "Appium" (Mac) and choose "New Session...", which
will open the New Session window without having to start a local server. In
this case, attaching to the local server will be disabled.
You can add available cloud providers as new tabs.
When you select Select Cloud Providers tab on the view,
Select Cloud Providers dialog appears.
You can select some of them and click Done, they will appear on
the New session window as tabs.
Appium Endpoints
These are the options for launching a session against a non-local Appium server:
