Appium Desktop 🖥️

Step 1: Download appium desktop

Appium desktop github releases for your platform

Step 2: Click on Start server

Verify server started correctly

Step 3: Adding Java and Android home

Select Presets > Edit Configuration

Add paths to JAVA_HOME and ANDROID_HOME variables

On mac

echo $JAVA_HOME
echo $ANDROID_HOME

Step 4: Adding capabilities

• Add capabilities JSON and then save it
• Also Save As with a familiar name

Sample capabilities

Android

{
    "platformName": "android",
    "automationName": "uiautomator2",
    "platformVersion": "10",
    "deviceName": "Automation",
    "app": "/<absolute_path_to_project>/src/test/resources/ApiDemos-debug.apk",
    "appPackage": "io.appium.android.apis",
    "appActivity": "io.appium.android.apis.ApiDemos"
}

To find appPackage or appActivity, you can follow a blog I wrote earlier Finding out package and activity name via adb for appium automation

iOS

{
    "platformName": "iOS",
    "automationName": "XCUITest",
    "deviceName": "iPhone 12 Pro Max",
    "app": "/<absolute_path_to_project>/src/test/resources/TestApp.app.zip"
}

For real device:

{
    "bundleId": "<your_app_bundle_id>",
    "automationName": "XCUITest",
    "xcodeOrgId": "<your_team_name>",
    "xcodeSigningId": "iPhone Developer",
    "waitForQuiescence": false,
    "useNewWDA": false,
    "wdaStartupRetries": 2,
    "resetOnSessionStartOnly": false,
    "useJSONSource": true,
    "shouldUseSingletonTestManager": false,
    "wdaLaunchTimeout": "999999999",
    "wdaConnectionTimeout": "999999999",
    "autoAcceptAlerts": true,
    "autoDismissAlerts": false
}

Step 5: Launch Appium Desktop or Appium Inspector to start investigating

Note: Appium project recently split Appium Desktop (Server + Inspector) into a separate inspector. Using this, you can run appium server via command line and just use inspector (It's also a light weight install). You can download the app from here