appium-xcuitest-driver

Appium XCUITest Driver is a combined solution, which allows to perform automated black-box testing of iOS and tvOS native applications and WebKit web views. The native testing is based on Apple's XCTest framework and the fork of Facebook's WebDriverAgent server (the original project is not supported anymore). Web views communication is done via Webkit remote debugger protocol. Real devices communication is ensured by appium-ios-device library. Simulators communication is ensured by appium-ios-simulator library.

In the native mode the driver operates in scope of WebDriver W3C protocol with several platform-specific extensions. Web views communication only supports the obsolete JWP protocol.

Note: Issue tracking for this repo has been disabled. Please use the main Appium issue tracker instead.

Requirements

On top of standard Appium requirements XCUITest driver also expects the following prerequisites:

• Only macOS is supported as the host platform
• Xcode and developer tools must be installed. Note, that usually some time is needed for the Appium team to pick up with the support of the most recent Xcode versions, especially beta ones.
• Connected real devices must be trusted, added to your developer profile and configured properly along with WebDriverAgent signing. Read Real devices section carefully to set them up properly before running your tests.
• The minimum supported Xcode SDK version for the current driver snapshot is 10.2 (iOS 12.2). Consider using earlier releases of the driver (see Xcode version support section below) if it is necessary to test older iOS versions on real devices. Also, it is highly recommended to always use the same major version of Xcode SDK, which was used to build the particular iOS/tvOS version on your real device under test (for example Xcode 11 for iOS 13, Xcode 12 for iOS 14, etc).
• Web views must be debuggable in order to test them. If it is not possible to connect to your web view(s) using Safari remote debugger then XCUITest won't be able to connect to them as well.
• Since version 3.33.0 (included into Appium 1.20.0+) of XCUITest driver the Carthage dependency is not needed anymore. Prior to that version it was required and could be installed using brew: brew install carthage.

Optional dependencies

• xcpretty tool could be used to make Xcode output easier to read. It could be installed using gem install xcpretty command.
• For test video recording we use ffmpeg. It could be installed using brew: brew install ffmpeg
• Facebook's IDB tool could be used to improve some real device/Simulator interactions
• WIX AppleSimulatorUtils could be used to improve some Simulator interactions

Xcode version support

• module versions below 2.96.0 only supports XCode 8 and newer
• module version 2.96.0 and above only supports XCode 9 and newer
• module version 3.0.0 and above only supports Xcode 10 and newer
• module version 3.32.0 and above only supports Xcode 10.2 and newer

Real devices

Configuration

See real device configuration documentation.

Known problems

After many failures on real devices it could transition to a state where connections are no longer being accepted. To possibly remedy this issue reboot the device. Read facebookarchive/WebDriverAgent#507 for more details.

Weird state

Note: Running WebDriverAgent tests on a real device is particularly flakey. If things stop responding, the only recourse is, most often, to restart the device. Logs in the form of the following may start to occur:

info JSONWP Proxy Proxying [POST /session] to [POST http://10.35.4.122:8100/session] with body: {"desiredCapabilities":{"ap..."
dbug WebDriverAgent Device: Jul 26 13:20:42 iamPhone XCTRunner[240] <Warning>: Listening on USB
dbug WebDriverAgent Device: Jul 26 13:21:42 iamPhone XCTRunner[240] <Warning>: Enqueue Failure: UI Testing Failure - Unable to update application state promptly. <unknown> 0 1
dbug WebDriverAgent Device: Jul 26 13:21:57 iamPhone XCTRunner[240] <Warning>: Enqueue Failure: UI Testing Failure - Failed to get screenshot within 15s <unknown> 0 1
dbug WebDriverAgent Device: Jul 26 13:22:57 iamPhone XCTRunner[240] <Warning>: Enqueue Failure: UI Testing Failure - App state of (null) is still unknown <unknown> 0 1

Real device security settings

On some systems, especially CI ones, where tests are executed by a command line agents, macOS Accessibility restrictions make the WebDriverAgent system unable to retrieve the development keys from the system keychain. This is usually manifest by xcodebuild returning an error code 65. A workaround for this is to use a private key that is not stored on the system keychain. See this issue and this Stack Exchange post.

To export the key, use

security create-keychain -p [keychain_password] MyKeychain.keychain
security import MyPrivateKey.p12 -t agg -k MyKeychain.keychain -P [p12_Password] -A

where MyPrivateKey.p12 is the private development key exported from the system keychain.

The full path to the keychain can then be sent to the Appium system using the keychainPath desired capability, and the password sent through the keychainPassword capability.

Capabilities

General

Capability	Description
platformName	Could be set to ios. 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 xcuitest. Values of automationName are compared case-insensitively.
appium:deviceName	The name of the device under test. Consider setting udid for real devices and use this one for Simulator selection 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 ve retrieved from Xcode->Window->Devices and Simulators window. Always set this capability if you run parallel tests or use a real device to run your 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.
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 safari.
appium:includeDeviceCapsToSessionInfo	Whether to include screen information as the result of Get Session Capabilities. It includes pixelRatio, statBarHeight and viewportRect, but it causes an extra API call to WDA which may increase the response time like this issue. Defaults to true.

App

Capability	Description
appium:bundleId	Bundle identifier of the app under test, for example com.mycompany.myapp. The capability value is calculated automatically if app is provided. If neither app or bundleId capability is provided then XCUITest driver starts from the Home screen.
appium:app	Full path to the application to be tested (the app must be located on the same machine where the server is running). .ipa and .app application extensions are supported. Zipped .app bundles are supported as well. Could also be an URL to a remote location. If neither of the app or bundleId capabilities are provided then the driver starts from the Home screen and expects the test to know what to do next. Do not provide both app and browserName capabilities at once.
appium:localizableStringsDir	Where to look for localizable strings in the application bundle. Defaults to en.lproj
appium:otherApps	App or list of apps (as a JSON array) to install prior to running tests. Note that it will not work with iOS real devices. Fore example: ["http://appium.github.io/appium/assets/TestApp9.4.app.zip", "/path/to/app-b.app"]
appium:language	Language to set for iOS, for example fr. Please read Language IDs to get more details abuot available values for this capability.
appium:locale	Locale to set for iOS, for example fr_CA. Please read Locale IDs to get more details abuot available values for this capability.
appium:appPushTimeout	The timeout for application upload in milliseconds. Works for real devices only. The default value is 30000ms

WebDriverAgent

Capability	Description	Values
appium:xcodeOrgId	Apple developer team identifier string. Must be used in conjunction with xcodeSigningId to take effect.	e.g., JWL241K123
appium:xcodeSigningId	String representing a signing certificate. Must be used in conjunction with xcodeOrgId. This is usually just iPhone Developer, so the default (if not included) is iPhone Developer	e.g., iPhone Developer
appium:xcodeConfigFile	Full path to an optional Xcode configuration file that specifies the code signing identity and team for running the WebDriverAgent on the real device.	e.g., /path/to/myconfig.xcconfig
appium:updatedWDABundleId	Bundle id to update WDA to before building and launching on real devices. This bundle id must be associated with a valid provisioning profile.	e.g., io.appium.WebDriverAgentRunner
appium:keychainPath	Full path to the private development key exported from the system keychain. Used in conjunction with keychainPassword when testing on real devices.	e.g., /path/to/MyPrivateKey.p12
appium:keychainPassword	Password for unlocking keychain specified in keychainPath.	e.g., super awesome password
appium:derivedDataPath	Use along with usePrebuiltWDA capability and choose where to search for the existing WDA app. If the capability is not set then Xcode will store the derived data in the default root taken from preferences.
appium:webDriverAgentUrl	If provided, Appium will connect to an existing WebDriverAgent instance at this URL instead of starting a new one.	e.g., http://localhost:8100
appium:useNewWDA	If true, forces uninstall of any existing WebDriverAgent app on device. Set it to true if you want to apply different startup options for WebDriverAgent for each session. Although, it is only guaranteed to work stable on Simulator. Real devices require WebDriverAgent client to run for as long as possible without reinstall/restart to avoid issues like facebookarchive/WebDriverAgent#507. The false value (the default behaviour since driver version 2.35.0) will try to detect currently running WDA listener executed by previous testing session(s) and reuse it if possible, which is highly recommended for real device testing and to speed up suites of multiple tests in general. A new WDA session will be triggered at the default URL (http://localhost:8100) if WDA is not listening and webDriverAgentUrl capability is not set. The negative/unset value of useNewWDA capability has no effect prior to xcuitest driver version 2.35.0.	e.g., true
appium:wdaLaunchTimeout	Time, in ms, to wait for WebDriverAgent to be pingable. Defaults to 60000ms.	e.g., 30000
appium:wdaConnectionTimeout	Timeout, in ms, for waiting for a response from WebDriverAgent. Defaults to 240000ms.	e.g., 1000
appium:wdaStartupRetries	Number of times to try to build and launch WebDriverAgent onto the device. Defaults to 2.	e.g., 4
appium:wdaStartupRetryInterval	Time, in ms, to wait between tries to build and launch WebDriverAgent. Defaults to 10000ms.	e.g., 20000
appium:wdaLocalPort	This value if specified, will be used to forward traffic from Mac host to real ios devices over USB. Default value is same as port number used by WDA on device.	e.g., 8100
appium:wdaBaseUrl	This value if specified, will be used as a prefix to build a custom WebDriverAgent url. It is different from webDriverAgentUrl, because if the latter is set then it expects WebDriverAgent to be already listening and skips the building phase. Defaults to http://localhost	e.g., http://192.168.1.100
appium:showXcodeLog	Whether to display the output of the Xcode command used to run the tests. If this is true, there will be lots of extra logging at startup. Defaults to false	e.g., true
appium:iosInstallPause	Time in milliseconds to pause between installing the application and starting WebDriverAgent on the device. Used particularly for larger applications. Defaults to 0	e.g., 8000
appium:usePrebuiltWDA	Skips the build phase of running the WDA app. Building is then the responsibility of the user. Only works for Xcode 8+. Defaults to false.	e.g., true
appium:shouldUseSingletonTestManager	Use default proxy for test management within WebDriverAgent. Setting this to false sometimes helps with socket hangup problems. Defaults to true.	e.g., false
appium:waitForIdleTimeout	The amount of time in float seconds to wait until the application under test is idling. XCTest requires the app's main thread to be idling in order to execute any action on it, so WDA might not even start/freeze if the app under test is constantly hogging the main thread. The default value is 10 (seconds). Setting it to zero disables idling checks completely (not recommended) and has the same effect as setting waitForQuiescence to false. Available since Appium 1.20.0.
appium:useXctestrunFile	Use Xctestrun file to launch WDA. It will search for such file in bootstrapPath. Expected name of file is WebDriverAgentRunner_iphoneos<sdkVersion>-arm64.xctestrun for real device and WebDriverAgentRunner_iphonesimulator<sdkVersion>-x86_64.xctestrun for simulator. One can do build-for-testing for WebDriverAgent project for simulator and real device and then you will see Product Folder like this and you need to copy content of this folder at bootstrapPath location. Since this capability expects that you have already built WDA project, it neither checks whether you have necessary dependencies to build WDA nor will it try to build project. Defaults to false. Tips: Xcodebuild builds for the target platform version. We'd recommend you to build with minimal OS version which you'd like to run as the original WDA module. e.g. If you build WDA for 12.2, the module cannot run on iOS 11.4 because of loading some module error on simulator. A module built with 11.4 can work on iOS 12.2. (This is xcodebuild's expected behaviour.)	e.g., true
appium:useSimpleBuildTest	Build with build and run test with test in xcodebuild for all Xcode version if this is true, or build with build-for-testing and run tests with test-without-building for over Xcode 8 if this is false. Defaults to false.	true or false
appium:wdaEventloopIdleDelay	Delays the invocation of -[XCUIApplicationProcess setEventLoopHasIdled:] by the number of seconds specified with this capability. This can help quiescence apps that fail to do so for no obvious reason (and creating a session fails for that reason). This increases the time for session creation because -[XCUIApplicationProcess setEventLoopHasIdled:] is called multiple times. If you enable this capability start with at least 3 seconds and try increasing it, if creating the session still fails. Defaults to 0.	e.g. 5
appium:processArguments	Process arguments and environment which will be sent to the WebDriverAgent server.	{ args: ["a", "b", "c"] , env: { "a": "b", "c": "d" } } or '{"args": ["a", "b", "c"], "env": { "a": "b", "c": "d" }}'
appium:autoLaunch	When set to false, prevents the application under test from being launched automatically as a part of the new session startup process. The launch become the responsibility of the user. Defaults to true.	true or false
appium:allowProvisioningDeviceRegistration	Allow xcodebuild to register your destination device on the developer portal if necessary. Requires a developer account to have been added in Xcode's Accounts preference pane. Defaults to false.	true or false
appium:resultBundlePath	Specify the path to the result bundle path as xcodebuild argument for WebDriverAgent build under a security flag (Please check Opt-in Features section below). WebDriverAgent process must start/stop every time to pick up changed value of this property. Specifying useNewWDA to true may help there. Please read man xcodebuild for more details.	e.g. /path/to/resultbundle
appium:resultBundleVersion	Specify the version of result bundle as xcodebuild argument for WebDriverAgent build. The default value depends on your Xcode version. Please read man xcodebuild for more details.	e.g. /path/to/resultbundle
appium:maxTypingFrequency	Maximum frequency of keystrokes for typing and clear. If your tests are failing because of typing errors, you may want to adjust this. Defaults to 60 keystrokes per minute.	e.g., 30
appium:simpleIsVisibleCheck	Use native methods for determining visibility of elements. In some cases this takes a long time. Setting this capability to false will cause the system to use the position and size of elements to make sure they are visible on the screen. This can, however, lead to false results in some situations. Defaults to false, except iOS 9.3, where it defaults to true.	e.g., true, false
appium:waitForQuiescence	It allows to turn on/off waiting for application quiescence in WebDriverAgent, while performing queries. The default value is true. You can avoid this kind of issues if you turn it off. Consider using waitForIdleTimeout capability instead for this purpose since Appium 1.20.0	e.g false
appium:mjpegServerPort	The port number on which WDA broadcasts screenshots stream encoded into MJPEG format from the device under test. It might be necessary to change this value if the default port is busy because of other tests running in parallel. Default value: 9100	e.g. 12000
appium:screenshotQuality	Changes the quality of phone display screenshots following xctest/xctimagequality Default value is 1. 0 is the highest and 2 is the lowest quality. You can also change it via settings command. 0 might cause OutOfMemory crash on high-resolution devices like iPad Pro.	e.g. 0, 1, 2
appium:autoAcceptAlerts	Accept all iOS alerts automatically if they pop up. This includes privacy access permission alerts (e.g., location, contacts, photos). Default is false.	true or false
appium:autoDismissAlerts	Dismiss all iOS alerts automatically if they pop up. This includes privacy access permission alerts (e.g., location, contacts, photos). Default is false.	true or false
appium:disableAutomaticScreenshots	Disable automatic screenshots taken by XCTest at every interaction. Default is up to WebDriverAgent's config to decide, which currently defaults to true.	true or false
appium:shouldTerminateApp	Specify if the app should be terminated on session end. This capability only has an effect if an application identifier has been passed to the test session (either explicitly, by setting bundleId, or implicitly, by providing app). Default is true.	true or false

Simulator

Capability	Description	Values
appium:orientation	Start a test in a certain orientation	LANDSCAPE or PORTRAIT
appium:scaleFactor	Simulator scale factor. This is useful to have if the default resolution of simulated device is greater than the actual display resolution. So you can scale the simulator to see the whole device screen without scrolling.	Acceptable values for simulators running Xcode SDK 8 and older are: '1.0', '0.75', '0.5', '0.33' and '0.25', where '1.0' means 100% scale. For simulators running Xcode SDK 9 and above the value could be any valid positive float number. The capability must be of a string type.
appium:connectHardwareKeyboard	Set this option to true in order to enable hardware keyboard in Simulator. It is set to false by default, because this helps to workaround some XCTest bugs.	true or false
appium:calendarAccessAuthorized	Set this to true if you want to enable calendar access on IOS Simulator with given bundleId. Set to false, if you want to disable calendar access on IOS Simulator with given bundleId. If not set, the calendar authorization status will not be set.	e.g., true
appium:calendarFormat	Calendar format to set for the iOS Simulator	e.g. gregorian
appium:isHeadless	Set this capability to true if automated tests are running on Simulator and the device display is not needed to be visible. This only has an effect since Xcode9 and only for simulators. All running instances of Simulator UI are going to be automatically terminated if headless test is started. false is the default value.	e.g., true
appium:simulatorWindowCenter	Allows to explicitly set the coordinates of Simulator window center for Xcode9+ SDK. This capability only has an effect if Simulator window has not been opened yet for the current session before it started.	e.g. {-100.0,100.0} or {500,500}, spaces are not allowed
appium:simulatorStartupTimeout	Allows to change the default timeout for Simulator startup. By default this value is set to 120000ms (2 minutes), although the startup could take longer on a weak hardware or if other concurrent processes use much system resources during the boot up procedure.	e.g. 300000
appium:simulatorTracePointer	Whether to highlight pointer moves in the Simulator window. The Simulator UI client must be shut down before the session startup in order for this capability to be applied properly. false by default.	e.g. true
appium:shutdownOtherSimulators	If this capability set to true and the current device under test is an iOS Simulator then Appium will try to shutdown all the other running Simulators before to start a new session. This might be useful while executing webview tests on different devices, since only one device can be debugged remotely at once due to an Apple bug. The capability only has an effect if --relaxed-security command line argument is provided to the server. Defaults to false.	e.g. true
appium:enforceFreshSimulatorCreation	Creates a new simulator in session creation and deletes it in session deletion. Defaults to false.	true or false
appium:keepKeyChains	Set the capability to true in order to preserve Simulator keychains folder after full reset. This feature has no effect on real devices. Defaults to false	e.g. true
appium:keychainsExcludePatterns	This capability accepts comma-separated path patterns, which are going to be excluded from keychains restore while full reset is being performed on Simulator. It might be useful if you want to exclude only particular keychain types from being restored, like the applications keychain. This feature has no effect on real devices.	e.g. *keychain*.db* to exclude applications keychain from being restored
appium:reduceMotion	It allows to turn on/off reduce motion accessibility preference. Setting reduceMotion on helps to reduce flakiness during tests. Only on simulators	e.g true
appium:permissions	Allows to set permissions for the specified application bundle on Simulator only. The capability value is expected to be a valid JSON string with {"<bundleId1>": {"<serviceName1>": "<serviceStatus1>", ...}, ...} format. Since Xcode SDK 11.4 Apple provides native APIs to interact with application settings. Check the output of xcrun simctl privacy booted command to get the list of available permission names. Use yes, no and unset as values in order to grant, revoke or reset the corresponding permission. Below Xcode SDK 11.4 it is required that applesimutils package is installed and available in PATH. The list of available service names and statuses can be found at https://github.com/wix/AppleSimulatorUtils.	e. g. {"com.apple.mobilecal": {"calendar": "YES"}}
appium:iosSimulatorLogsPredicate	Set the --predicate flag in the ios simulator logs	e.g.: 'process != "locationd" AND process != "DTServiceHub"' AND process != "mobileassetd"
appium:simulatorPasteboardAutomaticSync	Handle the -PasteboardAutomaticSync flag when simulator process launches. It could improve launching simulator performance not to sync pasteboard with the system when this value is off. on forces the flag enabled. system does not provide the flag to the launching command. on, off, or system is available. They are case insensitive. Defaults to off	e.g. system
appium:simulatorDevicesSetPath	This capability allows to set an alternative path to the simulator devices set in case you have multiple sets deployed on your local system. Such feature could be useful if you, for example, would like to save disk space on the main system volume.	e.g. /MyVolume/Devices
appium:customSSLCert	Adds a root SSL certificate to IOS Simulator.	e.g. -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----MIIFWjCCBEKg...-----END CERTIFICATE-----
appium:webkitResponseTimeout	(Real device only) Set the time, in ms, to wait for a response from WebKit in a Safari session. Defaults to 5000	e.g., 10000

Web Context

Capability	Description	Values
appium:absoluteWebLocations	This capability will direct the Get Element Location command, when used within webviews, to return coordinates which are relative to the origin of the page, rather than relative to the current scroll offset. This capability has no effect outside of webviews. Default false.	e.g., true
appium:safariGarbageCollect	Turns on/off Web Inspector garbage collection when executing scripts on Safari. Turning on may improve performance. Defaults to false.	true or false
appium:includeSafariInWebviews	Add Safari web contexts to the list of contexts available during a native/webview app test. This is useful if the test opens Safari and needs to be able to interact with it. Defaults to false.	true or false
appium:safariLogAllCommunication	Log all plists sent to and received from the Web Inspector, as plain text. For some operations this can be a lot of data, so it is recommended to be used only when necessary. Defaults to false.	true or false
appium:safariLogAllCommunicationHexDump	Log all communication sent to and received from the Web Inspector, as raw hex dump and printable characters. This logging is done before any data manipulation, and so can elucidate some communication issues. Like appium:safariLogAllCommunication, this can produce a lot of data in some cases, so it is recommended to be used only when necessary. Defaults to false.	true or false
appium:safariSocketChunkSize	The size, in bytes, of the data to be sent to the Web Inspector on iOS 11+ real devices. Some devices hang when sending large amounts of data to the Web Inspector, and breaking them into smaller parts can be helpful in those cases. Defaults to 16384 (also the maximum possible)	e.g., 1000
appium:safariWebInspectorMaxFrameLength	The maximum size in bytes of a single data frame for the Web Inspector. Too high values could introduce slowness and/or memory leaks. Too low values could introduce possible buffer overflow exceptions. Defaults to 20MB (20*1024*1024)	e.g. 1024, 100*1024*1024
appium:additionalWebviewBundleIds	Array (or JSON array) of possible bundle identifiers for webviews. This is sometimes necessary if the Web Inspector is found to be returning a modified bundle identifier for the app. Defaults to []	e.g., ['io.appium.modifiedId', 'ABCDEF']
appium:webviewConnectTimeout	The time to wait, in ms, for the initial presence of webviews in MobileSafari or hybrid apps. Defaults to 0	e.g., '5000'
appium:safariIgnoreWebHostnames	Provide a list of hostnames (comma-separated) that the Safari automation tools should ignore. This is to provide a workaround to prevent a webkit bug where the web context is unintentionally changed to a 3rd party website and the test gets stuck. The common culprits are search engines (yahoo, bing, google) and about:blank	e.g. 'www.yahoo.com, www.bing.com, www.google.com, about:blank'
appium:nativeWebTap	Enable native, non-javascript-based taps being in web context mode. Defaults to false. Warning: sometimes the preciseness of native taps could be broken, because there is no reliable way to map web element coordinates to native ones.	true
appium:nativeWebTapStrict	Enforce native taps to be done by XCUITest driver rather than WebDriverAgent. Only applicable if nativeWebTap is enabled. false by default	false
appium:safariInitialUrl	Initial safari url, default is a local welcome page	e.g. https://github.com
appium:safariAllowPopups	Allow javascript to open new windows in Safari. Default keeps current sim setting	true or false
appium:safariIgnoreFraudWarning	Prevent Safari from showing a fraudulent website warning. Default keeps current sim setting.	true or false
appium:safariOpenLinksInBackground	Whether Safari should allow links to open in new windows. Default keeps current sim setting.	true or false
appium:webviewConnectRetries	Number of times to send connection message to remote debugger, to get webview. Default: 8	e.g., 12
appium:webkitResponseTimeout	(Real device only) Set the time, in ms, to wait for a response from WebKit in a Safari session. Defaults to 5000	e.g., 10000
appium:enableAsyncExecuteFromHttps	Capability to allow simulators to execute asynchronous JavaScript on pages using HTTPS. Defaults to false	true or false
appium:fullContextList	Returns the detailed information on contexts for the get available context command. If this capability is enabled, then each item in the returned contexts list would additionally include WebView title, full URL and the bundle identifier. Defaults to false.	true or false
appium:enablePerformanceLogging	Enable Safari's performance logging (default false)	true, false
appium:autoWebview	Move directly into Webview context if available. Default false	true, false

Other

Capability	Description	Values
appium:resetOnSessionStartOnly	Whether to perform reset on test session finish (false) or not (true). Keeping this variable set to true and Simulator running (the default behaviour since version 1.6.4) may significantly shorten the duration of test session initialization.	Either true or false. Defaults to true
appium:commandTimeouts	Custom timeout(s) in milliseconds for WDA backend commands execution. This might be useful if WDA backend freezes unexpectedly or requires too much time to fail and blocks automated test execution. The value is expected to be of type string and can either contain max milliseconds to wait for each WDA command to be executed before terminating the session forcefully or a valid JSON string, where keys are internal Appium command names (you can find these in logs, look for "Executing command 'command_name'" records) and values are timeouts in milliseconds. You can also set the 'default' key to assign the timeout for all other commands not explicitly enumerated as JSON keys.	'120000', '{"findElement": 40000, "findElements": 40000, "setValue": 20000, "default": 120000}'
appium:useJSONSource	Get JSON source from WDA and transform it to XML on the Appium server side. Defaults to false.	e.g., true
appium:skipLogCapture	Skips to start capturing logs such as crash, system, safari console and safari network. It might improve performance such as network. Log related commands will not work. Defaults to false.	true or false
appium:launchWithIDB	Launch WebDriverAgentRunner with idb instead of xcodebuild. This could save a significant amout of time by skiping the xcodebuild process, although the idb might not be very reliable, especially with fresh Xcode SDKs. Check the idb repository for more details on possible compatibility issues. Defaults to false	true or false
appium:showIOSLog	Whether to show any logs captured from a device in the appium logs. Default false	true or false
appium:clearSystemFiles	Whether to clean temporary XCTest files (for example logs) when a testing session is closed. false by default	true or false
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.	e.g. 100

Element Attributes

XCUITest driver supports the following element attributes:

Name	Description	Example
name	Could contain either element's identifier or its label, depending on which one is available first. Could also be null. It is recommended to prefer the usage of accessibilityIdentifier over accessibilityLabel for automation purposes, since the identifier property is supposed to stay constant under different locales and does not affect accessibility services such as VoiceOver.	'hello'
label	Element's label value. Could be null	'hello'
type	Element's type name	'XCUIElementTypeButton'
visible	Whether the element is visible. This value is not available in the "vanilla" XCTest and is read directly from the accessibility layer	'false'
focused	Whether the element is focused. Only available for tvOS	'true'
accessible	Whether the element is accessible. This value is not available in the "vanilla" XCTest and is read directly from the accessibility layer	'true'
enabled	Whether the element is enabled.	'false'
selected	Whether the element is selected	'false'
index	Element's index in the hierarchy relatively to its parent. Only available since Appium 1.20.0. Indexing starts from 0.	'2'
rect	Element's rectangle. The actual data of this attribute is based on element's frame.	{'x': 0, 'y': 0, 'width': 100, 'height': 100}
value	Element's value. This is a complex attribute, whose calculation algorithm depends on the actual element type. Check WebDriverAgent sources to know more about how it is compiled (method - (NSString *)wdValue). Could be null	'hello'

Opt-in Features (With Security Risk)

These can be enabled when running this driver through Appium, via the --allow-insecure or --relaxed-security flags.

Feature Name	Description
shutdown_other_sims	Allow any session to use a capability to shutdown any running simulators on the host
perf_record	Allow recording the system performance and other metrics of the simulator
audio_record	Allow recording of host audio input(s)
customize_result_bundle_path	Allow customization of paths to result bundles by resultBundlePath capability

Settings API

XCUITest driver supports Appium Settings API. Along with the common settings the following driver-specific settings are currently available:

Name	Type	Description
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.
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
screenshotQuality	int	See the description of the corresponding capability.
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. 100 is by default, which means that screenshots are not downscaled.
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. 25 is by default, which means that screenshots are compressed to the quarter of their original quality.
customSnapshotTimeout (snapshotTimeout before 1.19.1)	float	Set how much time in float seconds is allowed to resolve a single accessibility snapshot with custom attributes. Snapshots are mainly used for page source generation, XML lookup and custom attributes retrieval (these are visibility and accessibility ones). It might be necessary to increase this value if the actual page source is very large and contains hundreds of UI elements. Defaults to 15 seconds. Since Appium 1.19.1 if this timeout expires and no custom snapshot could be made then WDA tries to calculate the missing attributes using its own algorithms, so setting this value to zero might speed up, for example, page source retrieval, but for the cost of preciseness of some element attributes.
waitForIdleTimeout	float	Has the same meaning as corresponding capability (see above)
animationCoolOffTimeout	float	The amount of time in float seconds to wait until the application under test does not have any active animations. This check is usually applied after each automation action that is supposed to change the state of the application under test, like click one, and blocks XCTest until the transition of the tested application to a new state completes or the cool off timeout occurs. The default value is 2 (seconds). Setting it to zero disables animation checks completely.
snapshotMaxDepth	int	Changes the value of maximum depth for traversing elements source tree. It may help to prevent out of memory or timeout errors while getting the elements source tree, but it might restrict the depth of source tree. Please consider restricting this value if you observed an error like Timed out snapshotting com.apple.testmanagerd... message or Cannot get 'xml' source of the current application in your Appium log since they are possibly timeout related. A part of elements source tree might be lost if the value was too small. Defaults to 50
useFirstMatch	boolean	Enabling this setting makes single element lookups faster, but there is the known problem related to nested elements lookup. Defaults to false.
reduceMotion	boolean	Changes the 'reduce motion' preference of accessibility feature. Defaults to false
defaultActiveApplication	string	Sets the hint for active application selection. This helps WebDriverAgent to select the current application if there are multiple items in the active applications list and the desired one is also one of them. The setting is particularly useful for split-screen apps automation. Defaults to auto, which makes WebDriverAgent to select the application whose element is located at screenPoint location or a single item from the active apps list if the length of this list is equal to one.
activeAppDetectionPoint	string	Defines the coordinates of the current screen point. WebDriverAgent uses this point to detect the active application if multiple application are active on the screen. The format of this value is x,y, where x and y are float or integer numbers representing valid screen coordinates. Setting this value to a point outside the actual screen coordinates might corrupt WebDriverAgent functionality. By default the screen point coordinates equal to 20% of the minimum screen dimension each, e.g. MIN(w, h) * 0.2, MIN(w, h) * 0.2
includeNonModalElements	boolean	Whether returns all of elements including no modal dialogs on iOS 13+. It fixes cannot find elements on nested modal presentations, but it might make visibility attributes unreliable. You could also enable shouldUseTestManagerForVisibilityDetection setting (defaults to false) or simpleIsVisibleCheck capability to improve the visibility detection. This issue may happen between iOS 13.0 to 13.2 (Xcode 11.0 to 11.2). The query issued in includeNonModalElements returns nil with newer iOS/Xcode versions and Appium/WDA return proper elements three without this setting being used. Defaults to false.
acceptAlertButtonSelector	string	Allows to customize accept alert button selector. It helps you to handle an arbitrary element as accept button in accept alert command. The selector should be a valid class chain expression, where the search root is the alert element itself. The default button location algorithm is used if the provided selector is wrong or does not match any element. Example: **/XCUIElementTypeButton[`label CONTAINS[c] 'accept'`]
dismissAlertButtonSelector	string	Allows to customize dismiss alert button selector. It helps you to handle an arbitrary element as dismiss button in dismiss alert command. The selector should be a valid class chain expression, where the search root is the alert element itself. The default button location algorithm is used if the provided selector is wrong or does not match any element. Example: **/XCUIElementTypeButton[`label CONTAINS[c] 'dismiss'`]
screenshotOrientation	string	Adjust screenshot orientation for iOS. Appium tries to return a screenshot and adjust its orientation properly using internal heuristics, but sometimes it does not work, especially in landscape mode. The actual screenshot orientation depends on various factors such as OS versions, model versions and whether this is a real or simulator device. This option allows you to enforce the given image orientation. Acceptable values: auto (default), portrait, portraitUpsideDown, landscapeRight, landscapeLeft.
boundElementsByIndex	boolean	Whether to look up elements with allElementsBoundByAccessibilityElement (default) or allElementsBoundByIndex. This Stack Overflow topic explains the differences. Defaults to false.
keyboardAutocorrection	boolean	Changes the 'Auto-Correction' preference in Keyboards setting. Defaults to false.
keyboardPrediction	boolean	Changes the 'Predictive' preference in Keyboards setting. Defaults to false.
nativeWebTap	boolean	See the description of the corresponding capability.
nativeWebTapStrict	boolean	See the description of the corresponding capability.
useJSONSource	boolean	See the description of the corresponding capability.

Element Location

XCUITest driver supports the following location strategies in the native context:

Name	Description	Example
id, name, accessibility id	All these locator types are synonyms and internally get transformed into search by element's name attribute.	my name
className	Performs search by element's type attribute. The full list of supported XCUIElement type names could be found in the official XCTest documentation on XCUIElementType	XCUIElementTypeButton
-ios predicate string	This strategy is mapped to the native XCTest predicate locator. Check the NSPredicate cheat sheet for more details on how to build effective predicate expressions. All the supported element attributes could be used in these expressions.	(name == 'done' OR value == 'done') AND type IN {'XCUIElementTypeButton', 'XCUIElementTypeKey'}
-ios class chain	This strategy is mapped to the native XCTest predicate locator, but with respect to the actual element tree hierarchy. Such locators are basically a supertype of -ios predicate string. Read Class Chain Queries Construction Rules for more details on how to build such locators.	**/XCUIElementTypeCell[$name == 'done' OR value == 'done'$]/XCUIElementTypeButton[-1]
xpath	For elements lookup using the Xpath strategy the driver uses the same XML tree that is generated by the page source API. This means such locators are the slowest (sometimes up to 10x slower) in comparison to the ones above, which all depend on native XCTest primitives, but are the most flexible. Use Xpath locators only if there is no other way to locate the given element. Only Xpath 1.0 is supported.	//XCUIElementTypeButton[@value=\"Regular\"]/parent::*

Also, consider checking the How To Achieve The Best Lookup Performance article.

Parallel Tests

It is possible to execute tests in parallel using XCUITest 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 must be a unique device UDID for each parallel session.
• wdaLocalPort must be a unique port number for each parallel session. The default value is 8100.
• derivedDataPath set the unique derived data path root for each driver instance. This will help to avoid possible conflicts and to speed up the parallel execution.
• mjpegServerPort must be a unique port number for each parallel session if you are going to record a video stream from it. The default value is 9100.

Important Simulator Capabilities

• Either udid, which is the unique simulator UDID for each parallel session (it could be retrieved from xcrun simctl list command output), or a unique combination of deviceName and platformVersion capabilities to identify the appropriate simulator with the given name and version number for each parallel session.
• wdaLocalPort must be a unique port number for each parallel session. The default value is 8100.
• derivedDataPath set the unique derived data path root for each driver instance. This will help to avoid possible conflicts and to speed up the parallel execution.
• mjpegServerPort must be a unique port number for each parallel session if you are going to record a video stream from it. The default value is 9100.

Platform-Specific Extensions

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

mobile: selectPickerWheelValue

Performs selection of the next or previous picker wheel value. This might be useful if these values are populated dynamically, so you don't know which one to select or value selection suing sendKeys API does not work because of an XCTest bug. The method throws an exception if it fails to change the current picker value.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
elementId (element before version 1.22)	string	yes	PickerWheel's internal element id (as hexadecimal hash string) to perform value selection on. The element must be of type XCUIElementTypePickerWheel	abcdef12-1111-2222-3333-444444
order	string	yes	Either next to select the value next to the current one from the target picker wheel or previous to select the previous one.	next
offset	number	no	The value in range [0.01, 0.5]. It defines how far from picker wheel's center the click should happen. The actual distance is calculated by multiplying this value to the actual picker wheel height. Too small offset value may not change the picker wheel value and too high value may cause the wheel to switch two or more values at once. Usually the optimal value is located in range [0.15, 0.3]. 0.2 by default	0.15

mobile: alert

Tries to apply the given action to the currently visible alert.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
action	string	yes	The actual action to apply. Could be either: accept, dismiss or getButtons	accept
buttonLabel	string	no	The name of the button used to perform the chosen alert action. Only makes sense if the action is accept or dismiss	Accept

Returned Result

The list of alert button names if the selected action is getButtons

mobile: setPasteboard

Sets the Simulator's pasteboard content to the given value. Does not work for real devices.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
content	string	yes	The content to set	hello
encoding	string	no	The content's encoding. utf8 by default	ascii

mobile: getPasteboard

Gets the Simulator's pasteboard content. Does not work for real devices.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
encoding	string	no	The expected encoding of the returned string. utf8 by default	ascii

Returned Result

The pasteboard content string.

mobile: source

Allows to retrieve the source tree of the current page in different representation formats.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
format	string	yes	One of possible page tree source representation formats: xml (the default value), description and json. The xml format generates the output similar to what getPageSource standard API returns. description representation is how XCTest "sees" the page internally and is the same string as debugDescription API would return for the root application element. This source representation format is useful for debugging purposes and is the fastest one to fetch. json representation is similar to xml, but the tree hierarchy there is represented as JSON elements tree rather than as XML nodes.	description
excludedAttributes	string	no	One or more comma-separated attribute names to be excluded from the XML output, thus only makes sense if format is set to xml. It might be sometimes helpful to exclude, for example, the visible attribute, to significantly speed-up page source retrieval.	visible,accessible

Returned Result

The page source tree formatted according to the given format argument.

mobile: getContexts

Retrieves the list of available contexts including the extended context information, like urls and page names. This is different from the standard getContexts API, because the latter only has web view names without any additional information. In situation where multiple web views are available at once the client code would have to connect to each of them in order to detect the one, which needs to be interacted with. Although, this extra effort is not needed with the information provided by this extension.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
waitForWebviewMs	number	no	Tells Appium for how long (in milliseconds) to wait for web view(s) to appear. 5000ms by default	10000

Returned Result

The list of available context objects along with their properties:

• id: The identifier of the context. The native context will be 'NATIVE_APP' and the webviews will be 'WEBVIEW_xxx'
• title: The title associated with the webview content. Could be null
• url: The url associated with the webview content. Could be null

mobile: installApp

Installs the given application to the device under test. Make sure the app is built for a correct architecture and is signed with a proper signature (for real devices) prior to install it.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
app	string	yes	See the description of the appium:app capability	/path/to/my.app

mobile: isAppInstalled

Checks whether the given application is installed on the device under test.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
bundleId	string	yes	The bundle identifier of the application to be checked	com.mycompany.myapp

Returned Result

Either true or false

mobile: removeApp

Removes the given application from the device under test.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
bundleId	string	yes	The bundle identifier of the application to be removed	com.mycompany.myapp

Returned Result

Either true if the app was successfully uninstalled, otherwise false

mobile: launchApp

Executes the given app on the device under test. If the app is already running then it would be activated. If the app is not installed or cannot be launched then an exception is thrown.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
bundleId	string	yes	The bundle identifier of the application to be launched	com.mycompany.myapp
arguments	string	array	no	One or more command line arguments for the app. If the app is already running then this argument is ignored.
environment	dict	no	Environment variables mapping for the app. If the app is already running then this argument is ignored.	{'var': 'value'}

mobile: terminateApp

Terminates the given app on the device under test. If the app is not installed an exception is thrown. If the app is not running then nothing is done.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
bundleId	string	yes	The bundle identifier of the application to be terminated	com.mycompany.myapp

Returned Result

Either true if the app was successfully terminated, otherwise false

mobile: queryAppState

Queries the state of an installed application from the device under test. An exception will be thrown if the app with given identifier is not installed.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
bundleId	string	yes	The bundle identifier of the application to be queried	com.mycompany.myapp

Returned Result

An integer number is returned, which encodes the application state. Possible values are described in XCUIApplicationState XCTest documentation topic.

mobile: activateApp

Puts the given application to foreground if it is running in the background. An error is thrown if the app is not installed or is not running. Nothing is done if the app is already running in the foreground.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
bundleId	string	yes	The bundle identifier of the application to be activated	com.mycompany.myapp

mobile: startPerfRecord

Starts performance profiling for the device under test. Relaxing security is mandatory for simulators. It can always work for real devices. Since XCode 12 the method tries to use xctrace tool to record performance stats. The instruments developer utility is used as a fallback for this purpose if xctrace is not available. It is possible to record multiple profiles at the same time. Read Instruments User Guide for more details. If the recording for the given profile is already running then nothing is done.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
timeout	number	no	The maximum count of milliseconds to record the profiling information. It is recommended to always limit the maximum duration of perf record operation, since the resulting logs are pretty huge and may easily exceed the free space on th local storage volume. 300000ms by default (5 minutes)	600000
profileName	string	no	The name of existing performance profile to apply. Can also contain the full path to the chosen template on the server file system. Note, that not all profiles are supported on mobile devices. Activity Monitor by default.	Time Profile
pid	string or number	no	The ID of the process to measure the performance for. Set it to current in order to measure the performance of the process, which belongs to the currently active application. All processes running on the device are measured if pid is unset (the default setting).	current

mobile: stopPerfRecord

Stops the performance recording operation previosuly started by mobile: startPerfRecord call. If the previous call has already been completed due to the timeout then its result is returned immediately. An error is thrown if the performance recording has failed to start and recorded no data.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
profileName	string	no	The name of existing performance profile to stop the recording for. Multiple recorders for different profile names could be executed at the same time. Activity Monitor by default.	Time Profile
remotePath	string	no	The path to the remote location, where the resulting zipped .trace file 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 zipped, encoded as Base64 and passed as the endpoint response value. An exception will be thrown if the generated file is too big to fit into the available process memory.	https://myserver/upload
user	string	no	The name of the user for the remote authentication. Only works if remotePath is provided.	myuser
pass	string	no	The password for the remote authentication. Only works if remotePath is provided.	mypassword
method	string	no	The http multipart upload method name. Only works if remotePath is provided. PUT by default	POST
headers	dict	no	Additional headers mapping for multipart http(s) uploads	{'User-Agent': 'Myserver 1.0'}
fileFieldName	string	no	The name of the form field, where the file content BLOB should be stored for http(s) uploads. file by default	payload
formFields	dict or array	no	Additional form fields for multipart http(s) uploads	{'field2': 'value2'}

Returned Result

The resulting file in .trace format can be either returned directly as base64-encoded zip archive or uploaded to a remote location (such files could be pretty large), depending on the remotePath argument value. Afterwards it is possible to unarchive and open such file with Xcode Developer Tools.

mobile: installCertificate

Installs a custom certificate onto the device. Since Xcode SDK 11.4 Apple has added a dedicated simctl subcommand to quickly handle certificates on Simulator over CLI. On real devices or simulators before Xcode 11.4 SDK Apple provides no official way to do it via the command line. In such case (and also as a fallback if CLI setup fails) this method tries to wrap the certificate into .mobileconfig format and then deploys the wrapped file to the internal HTTP server, so one can open it via mobile Safari. Then the algorithm goes through the profile installation procedure by clicking the necessary buttons using WebDriverAgent.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
content	string	yes	Base64-encoded content of the public certificate	a23234...
commonName	string	no	Common name of the certificate. If this is not set then the script will try to parse it from the given certificate content.	com.myorg
isRoot	boolean	no	This option defines where the certificate should be installed to: either Trusted Root Store (true, the default option) or the Keychain (false). On environments other than Xcode 11.4+ Simulator this option is ignored.	false

Returned Result

The content of the generated .mobileconfig file as base64-encoded string. This config might be useful for debugging purposes. If the certificate has been successfully set via CLI then nothing is returned.

mobile: startLogsBroadcast

Starts iOS system logs broadcast websocket on the same host and port where Appium server is running at /ws/session/:sessionId:/appium/syslog endpoint. The method will return immediately if the web socket is already listening. Each connected webcoket listener will receive syslog lines as soon as they are visible to Appium. Read Using Mobile Execution Commands to Continuously Stream Device Logs with Appium Appium Pro article for more details on this feature.

mobile: stopLogsBroadcast

Stops the syslog broadcasting wesocket server previously started by mobile: startLogsBroadcast. This method will return immediately if no server is running.

mobile: batteryInfo

Reads the battery information from the device under test. This endpoint only returns reliable result on real devices.

Returned Result

The actual battery info map, which consists of the following entries:

• level: Battery level in range [0.0, 1.0], where 1.0 means 100% charge.
• state: Battery state as an integer number. The following values are possible:
  • UIDeviceBatteryStateUnknown = 0
  • UIDeviceBatteryStateUnplugged = 1 // on battery, discharging
  • UIDeviceBatteryStateCharging = 2 // plugged in, less than 100%
  • UIDeviceBatteryStateFull = 3 // plugged in, at 100%

mobile: deviceInfo

Returns the miscellaneous information about the device under test.

Returned Result

Check the + (id<FBResponsePayload>)handleGetDeviceInfo:(FBRouteRequest *)request method in FBCustomCommands.m for more details on the available map entries.

mobile: getDeviceTime

Returns the actual device time.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
format	string	no	The format specifier string. Read MomentJS documentation 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-DD HH:mm:ss

Returned Result

The retrieved datetime string formatted according to the given format specfier.

mobile: activeAppInfo

Returns information about the active application.

Returned Result

Check the + (id<FBResponsePayload>)handleActiveAppInfo:(FBRouteRequest *)request method in FBCustomCommands.m for more details on the available map entries.

mobile: pressButton

Emulates press action on the given physical device button. iOS is pressButton:, tvOS is pressButton: or pressButton:forDuration:. mobile: performIoHidEvent calls a more universal API to perform press with duration on any supported device.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
name	string	yes	The name of the button to be pressed. Supported button names for iOS-based devices are (case-insensitive): home, volumeup, volumedown. For tvOS-based devices (case-insensitive): home, up, down, left, right, menu, playpause, select	home
durationSeconds	number	no	Duration in float seconds for tvOS-based devices since Appium 1.22.0	10

mobile: pushNotification

Simulates push notification delivery to Simulator. Only application remote push notifications are supported. VoIP, Complication, File Provider, and other types are not supported. Check the output of xcrun simctl help push command for more details.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
bundleId	string	yes	The bundle identifier of the target application	com.apple.Preferences
payload	map	yes	Valid Apple Push Notification values. Read the Create the JSON Payload topic of the official Apple documentation for more details on the payload creation.	{"aps": {"alert": {"title": "This is a simulated notification!"}, "badge": 3, "sound": "default"} }

mobile: expectNotification

Blocks until the expected notification is delivered. It is a thin wrapper over XCTNSNotificationExpectation and XCTDarwinNotificationExpectation entities. The extension call throws TimeoutError if the expected notification has not been delivered within the given timeout.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
name	string	yes	The name of the notification to expect	com.example.fooAllDone
type	string	no	Which notification type to expect. Either plain (the default value) to wait for a notification from the default notification center or darwin to wait for a system notification.	darwin
timeoutSeconds	number	no	For how long to wait until the notification is delivered in float seconds. 60 seconds by default	5.5

mobile: performIoHidEvent

Emulates triggering of the given low-level IO HID device event. Constants for possible events are defined in XNU kernel IO HID usage tables. For example, in order to emulate single press on Home button the extension should be called with the following arguments:

• page: 0x0C (kHIDPage_Consumer, select the Customer page)
• usage: 0x40 (kHIDUsage_Csmr_Menu, the Csmr prefix here means this usage is dedicated to the Customer page)
• durationSeconds: 0.005 (The event duration should be 5 milliseconds to be recognized as a single press by iOS)

Some popular constants:

Name	Value	Description
kHIDPage_Consumer	0x0C	The page containing all usages prefixed with kHIDUsage_Csmr_
kHIDUsage_Csmr_VolumeIncrement	0xE9	Volume Up
kHIDUsage_Csmr_VolumeDecrement	0xEA	Volume Down
kHIDUsage_Csmr_Menu	0x40	Home
kHIDUsage_Csmr_Power	0x30	Power/Lock
kHIDUsage_Csmr_Snapshot	0x65	Power + Home

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
page	int	yes	The event page identifier. Look for constants perfixed with kHIDPage_ in the table above	0x0C
usage	int	yes	The event usage identifier (usages are defined per-page). Look for constants prefixed with kHIDUsage_ in the table above	0x40
durationSeconds	number	yes	The event duration in float seconds. XCTest uses 0.005 for a single press event duration	2.5

mobile: enrollBiometric

Enrolls biometric authentication on Simulator.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
isEnabled	boolean	no	Whether to enable/disable biometric enrollment. true by default.	true

mobile: sendBiometricMatch

Emulates biometric match/non-match event on Simulator. The biometric feature is expected to be already enrolled before executing that.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
type	string	no	The biometric feature name. Either touchId or faceId. touchId by default.	faceId
match	boolean	no	Whether to simulate biometric match (true, the default value) or non-match (false).	true

mobile: isBiometricEnrolled

Checks whether biometric is currently enrolled or not on a Simulator device.

Returned Result

Either true or false

mobile: clearKeychains

Clears keychains on Simulator. An exception is thrown for real devices.

mobile: getPermission

Gets application permission state on Simulator. This method requires WIX applesimutils to be installed on the host where Appium server is running.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
bundleId	string	yes	The bundle identifier of the destination app.	com.mycompany.myapp
service	string	yes	One of available service names. The following services are supported: calendar, camera, contacts, homekit, microphone, photos, reminders, medialibrary, motion, health, siri, speech.	true

Returned Result

Either 'yes', 'no' or 'unset'.

mobile: setPermission

Set application permission state on Simulator. This method requires WIX applesimutils to be installed on the host where Appium server is running.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
bundleId	string	yes	The bundle identifier of the destination app.	com.mycompany.myapp
access	map	yes	One or more access rules to set. The following keys are supported: all (Apply the action to all services), calendar (Allow access to calendar), contacts-limited (Allow access to basic contact info), contacts (Allow access to full contact details), location (Allow access to location services when app is in use), location-always (Allow access to location services at all times), photos-add (Allow adding photos to the photo library), photos (Allow full access to the photo library), media-library (Allow access to the media library), microphone (Allow access to audio input), motion (Allow access to motion and fitness data), reminders (Allow access to reminders), siri (Allow use of the app with Siri.). The following values are supported: yes (To grant the permission), no (To revoke the permission), unset (To reset the permission)	{'all': 'yes'}

mobile: resetPermission

Resets the given permission for the active application under test. Works for both Simulator and real devices using Xcode SDK 11.4+

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
service	string or int	yes	One of available service names. The supported service names are: calendar, camera, contacts, health, homekit, keyboardnet, location, medialibrary, microphone, photos, reminders, systemroot, userdesktop, userdocuments, userdownloads, bluetooth. This could also be an integer protected resource identifier taken from XCUIProtectedResource	photos

mobile: getAppearance

Get the device's UI appearance style.

Returned Result

An object, with the following entries:

• style: The device's UI appearance value. This could be one of: light, dark, unknown, unsupported

mobile: setAppearance

Set the device's UI appearance style.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
style	string	yes	Either light or dark	dark

mobile: siriCommand

Presents the Siri UI, if it is not currently active, and accepts a string which is then processed as if it were recognized speech. Check the documentation on activateWithVoiceRecognitionText XCTest method for more details.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
text	string	yes	The actual command that will be passed to Siri service	Hello Siri

mobile: deleteFile

Deletes the given file from the device under test.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
remotePath	string	yes	The path to an existing remote file on the device. This variable can be prefixed with bundle id, so then the file will be downloaded from the corresponding application container instead of the default media folder. Use @<app_bundle_id>:<optional_container_type>/<path_to_the_file_or_folder_inside_container> format to delete a file or a folder from an application container of the given type. The only supported container type is 'documents'. If the container type is not set explicitly for a bundle id, then the default application container is going to be mounted (aka --container ifuse argument) e.g. If @com.myapp.bla:documents/111.png is provided, On My iPhone/<app name> in Files app will be mounted to the host machine. @com.myapp.bla:documents/ means On My iPhone/<app name>.	@com.mycompany.myapp:documents/myfile.txt

mobile: deleteFolder

Deletes the given folder from the device under test.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
remotePath	string	yes	Same value as for mobile: deleteFile except of the fact it should be pointing to a folder and should end with a single slash /	@com.mycompany.myapp:documents/myfolder/

mobile: configureLocalization

Change localization settings on the currently booted Simulator. The changed settings are only applied for the newly started applications/activities. Currently running applications will stay unchanged. This means, for example, that the keyboard should be hidden and shown again in order to observe the changed layout, and curresponding apps must be restarted in order to observe their interface using the newly set locale/language. Be careful while setting the actual arguments since their actual values are not strictly checked. This could lead to an unexpected behavior if an incorrect/unsupported language or locale abbreviation is provided.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
keyboard	map	no	On-screen keyboard properties. The name key is required and should be set to a valid locale abbreviation. The layout key is also required. The hardware key is optional and could be omitted or set to Automated. You could switch the keyboard layout in system preferences of your booted simulator, run xcrun simctl spawn booted defaults read .GlobalPreferences.plist, and inspect the value of AppleKeyboards to see possible combinations.	{"name": "de_CH", "layout": "QWERTZ", "hardware": "Automated"}
language	map	no	System language properties. The name key is required and should be set to a valid language abbreviation. You could switch the system language in preferences of your booted simulator, run xcrun simctl spawn booted defaults read .GlobalPreferences.plist, and inspect the value of AppleLanguages to see possible combinations.	{"name": "zh-Hant-CN"}
locale	map	no	System locale properties. The name key is required and should be set to a valid language abbreviation. The calendarkey is optonal and could be set to a valid calendar format name. You could switch the system locale/calendar format in preferences of your booted simulator, run xcrun simctl spawn booted defaults read .GlobalPreferences.plist, and inspect the value of AppleLocale to see possible combinations.	{"name": "uk_UA", "calendar": "gregorian"}

Returned Result

true if any of settings has been successfully changed.

mobile: startAudioRecording

Records the given hardware audio input into an .mp4 file. You must allow the audio_record security feature in order to use this extension. Also it is required that FFMpeg is installed on the machibe where Appium server is running.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
audioInput	string or int	yes	The name of the corresponding audio input device to use for the capture. The full list of capture devices could be shown using ffmpeg -f avfoundation -list_devices true -i "" Terminal command.	1
audioCodec	string	no	The name of the audio codec. The Advanced Audio Codec (aac) is used by default.	aac
audioBitrate	string	no	The bitrate of the resulting audio stream. 128k by default.	256k
audioChannels	string or int	no	The count of audio channels in the resulting stream. Setting it to 1 will create a single channel (mono) audio stream. 2 By default	1
audioRate	string or int	no	The sampling rate of the resulting audio stream. 44100 by default	22050
timeLimit	string or int	no	The maximum recording time, in seconds. The default value is 180, the maximum value is 43200 (12 hours).	60
forceRestart	boolean	no	Whether to restart audio capture process forcefully when startRecordingAudio is called (true) or ignore the call until the current audio recording is completed (false, the default value).	true

mobile: stopAudioRecording

Stops recording of the audio input. If no audio recording process is running then the endpoint will try to get the recently recorded file. If no previously recorded file is found and no active audio recording processes are running then the method returns an empty string.

Returned Result

Base64-encoded content of the recorded media file or an empty string if no audio recording has been started before.

mobile: runXCTest

Run a native XCTest script. Launches a subprocess that runs the XC Test and blocks until it is completed. Parses the stdout of the process and returns its result as an array. Facebook's IDB tool is required to run such tests.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
testRunnerBundleId	string	yes	Test app bundle	io.appium.XCTesterAppUITests.xctrunner
appUnderTestBundleId	string	yes	App-under-test bundle	com.mycompany.myapp
xcTestBundleID	string	yes	xctest bundle id	io.appium.XCTesterAppUITests
testType	string	no	Test type. Either ui (the default one), app or logic	app
env	map	no	Environment variables mapping to be passed to the test	{'myvar': 'myvalue'}
args	array	no	Launch arguments to start the test with (see https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xctest/xcuiapplication/1500477-launcharguments for reference)	['-arg1', '--arg2']
timeout	string or int	no	Timeout if session doesn't complete after given time (in milliseconds). 360000ms by default	120000

Returned Result

The API calls returns a map with the following entries:

• results: The array of test results. Each item in this array conists of the following entries:
  • testName: Name of the test (e.g.: 'XCTesterAppUITests - XCTesterAppUITests.XCTesterAppUITests/testExample')
  • passed: Did the tests pass?
  • crashed: Did the tests crash?
  • duration: How long did the tests take (in seconds)
  • failureMessage: Failure message (if applicable)
  • location The geolocation of the test (if applicable)
• code: The exit code of the process. 0 value marks a successful execution.
• signal: The signal that terminated the process. Could be null (e.g.: SIGTERM)

mobile: installXCTestBundle

Installs an XCTest bundle to the device under test. Facebook's IDB tool is required to for this API to work.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
xctestBundle	string	yes	Path to your xctest .app bundle. Could be an URL	/path/to/my/bundle.app

mobile: listXCTestBundles

List XCTest bundles that are installed on device. Facebook's IDB tool is required to for this API to work.

Returned Result

Array of XCTest bundles (e.g.: ["XCTesterAppUITests.XCTesterAppUITests/testLaunchPerformance"])

mobile: listXCTestsInTestBundle

List XCTests in a test bundle. Facebook's IDB tool is required to for this API to work.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description	Example
bundle	string	yes	Bundle ID of the XCTest	'com.bundle.myapp'

Returned Result

Array of xctests in the test bundle (e.g.: [ 'XCTesterAppUITests.XCTesterAppUITests/testExample', 'XCTesterAppUITests.XCTesterAppUITests/testLaunchPerformance' ])

mobile: viewportRect

Retrieves the viwport dimensions. The viewport is the device's screen size with status bar size subtracted if the latter is present/visible.

Returned Result

The response looks like {"value":{"left":0,"top":96,"width":828,"height":1696}}.

left and top are distance from the left of the screen and the top of the screen. iOS Drawing Concepts could help about the relationship of coordinate.

width and height are the screen's width and height.

mobile: deviceScreenInfo

Get information about screen.

Returned Result

The response looks like {"value":{"statusBarSize":{"width":414,"height":48},"scale":2}}

statusBarSize contains status bar dimensions. It is the result of status bar. scale is screen scale.

Mobile Gesture Commands

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

• mobile: tap
• mobile: scroll
• mobile: pinch
• mobile: doubleTap
• mobile: touchAndHold
• mobile: twoFingerTap
• mobile: tap
• mobile: dragFromToForDuration
• mobile: tapWithNumberOfTaps
• mobile: rotateElement

These gestures are documented in the Automating Mobile Gestures for iOS tutorial. Refer W3C Actions API if you need to automate more complicated gestures.

Known issues

• shake is implemented via AppleScript and works only on Simulator due to lack of support from Apple

Sim Resetting

By default, this driver will create a new iOS simulator and run tests on it, deleting the simulator afterward.

If you specify a specific simulator using the udid capability, this driver will boot the specified simulator and shut it down afterwards.

If a udid is provided and the simulator is already running, this driver will leave it running after the test run.

In short, this driver tries to leave things as it found them.

You can use the noReset capability to adjust this behavior. Setting noReset to true will leave the simulator running at the end of a test session.

Development

To install the project check it out from GitHub and run:

npm install

To watch changes during the development:

npm run watch

To run unit/functional tests:

npm test
npm e2e-test

There are also a number of environment variables that can be used when running the tests locally. These include:

• REAL_DEVICE - set to anything truthy, makes the tests use real device capabilities
• _FORCE_LOGS - set to 1 to get the log output, not just spec
• PLATFORM_VERSION - change the version to run the tests against (defaults to 9.3)
• XCCONFIG_FILE - specify where the xcode config file is for a real device run (if blank, and running a real device test, it will search for the first file in the root directory of the repo with the extension "xcconfig")
• UICATALOG_REAL_DEVICE - path to the real device build of UICatalog, in case the npm installed one is not built for real device