README.md

appium-xcuitest-driver

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

Known issues

• shake is implemented via AppleScript and works only on Simulator due to lack of support from Apple
• Through multi action API, zoom works but pinch does not, due to Apple issue.

External dependencies

There is also a dependency, made necessary by Facebook's WebDriverAgent, for the Carthage dependency manager. If you do not have Carthage on your system, it can also be installed with Homebrew

brew install carthage

For real devices we can use xcpretty to make Xcode output more reasonable. This can be installed by

gem install xcpretty

Xcode dependency

• 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

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.

Real devices

Configuration

See real device configuration documentation.

Known problems

After many failures on real devices, there can be a state where the device will no longer accept connections. To possibly remedy this reboot the device. Read facebookarchive/WebDriverAgent#507 for more details. Getting full control over WDA server might help to workaround the problem.

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 there are Accessibility restrictions that make the WebDriverAgent system unable to run. 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.

Desired Capabilities

Should be the same for Appium

Differences are noted here:

WebDriverAgent build and run capabilities:

Capability	Description	Values
xcodeOrgId	Apple developer team identifier string. Must be used in conjunction with xcodeSigningId to take effect.	e.g., JWL241K123
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
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
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
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
keychainPassword	Password for unlocking keychain specified in keychainPath.	e.g., super awesome password
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.
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
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
wdaLaunchTimeout	Time, in ms, to wait for WebDriverAgent to be pingable. Defaults to 60000ms.	e.g., 30000
wdaConnectionTimeout	Timeout, in ms, for waiting for a response from WebDriverAgent. Defaults to 240000ms.	e.g., 1000
wdaStartupRetries	Number of times to try to build and launch WebDriverAgent onto the device. Defaults to 2.	e.g., 4
wdaStartupRetryInterval	Time, in ms, to wait between tries to build and launch WebDriverAgent. Defaults to 10000ms.	e.g., 20000
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
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
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
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
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
useCarthageSsl	Use SSL to download dependencies for WebDriverAgent. Defaults to true	true, false
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
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
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
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
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" }}'
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

Simulator control capabilities:

Capability	Description	Values
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
enforceFreshSimulatorCreation	Creates a new simulator in session creation and deletes it in session deletion. Defaults to false.	true or false
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
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
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
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"}}
iosSimulatorLogsPredicate	Set the --predicate flag in the ios simulator logs	e.g.: 'process != "locationd" AND process != "DTServiceHub"' AND process != "mobileassetd"
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

General capabilities:

Capability	Description	Values
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 duratiuon of test session initialization.	Either true or false. Defaults to true
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}'
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
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
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
useJSONSource	Get JSON source from WDA and parse into XML on Appium server. This can be much faster, especially on large devices. Defaults to false.	e.g., true
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
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.	e.g false
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
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
safariGarbageCollect	Turns on/off Web Inspector garbage collection when executing scripts on Safari. Turning on may improve performance. Defaults to false.	true or false
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
appPushTimeout	The timeout for application upload in milliseconds. Works for real devices only. The default value is 30000ms	e. g. 60000
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
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 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
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
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
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']
webviewConnectTimeout	The time to wait, in ms, for the initial presence of webviews in MobileSafari or hybrid apps. Defaults to 0	e.g., '5000'
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

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)

Watch

npm run watch

Test

npm 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