What is Appium Inspector?

Setting Up Appium Inspector

1. Install Appium Server: Download and install the Appium server from the official website. You can also install it via npm using the command npm install -g appium.
2. Install Appium Desktop: Appium Desktop comes with the Inspector tool. Download and install it from the Appium Desktop GitHub repository.
3. Set Up Your Android Environment:
   • Ensure you have Android Studio installed.
   • Set up Android SDK and add it to your system’s PATH.
   • Enable Developer Options and USB Debugging on your Android device.

Launching Appium Inspector

1. Start Appium Server: Launch the Appium server from the Appium Desktop application.
2. Configure Desired Capabilities: Desired capabilities are a set of key-value pairs that specify the configurations required for the Appium session. Here’s an example configuration for an Android device:

{
  "platformName": "Android",
  "platformVersion": "11.0",
  "deviceName": "YourDeviceName",
  "app": "/path/to/your/app.apk",
  "automationName": "UiAutomator2"
}

• • Click on the Start Session button in the Appium Desktop application after setting the desired capabilities.
  • The Appium Inspector window will open, displaying the current screen of your application.

Using Appium Inspector to Find Elements

1. Navigating the UI:
   • The Inspector window will show a screenshot of your app’s current state.
   • You can interact with the app directly through the Inspector, just as you would on a real device.
2. Inspecting Elements:
   • Hover over elements on the screen to highlight them.
   • Click on an element to select it and view its properties in the right-hand panel.
   • The properties panel will display various attributes of the selected element, including resource ID, class name, text, content description, and XPath.
3. Extracting Locators:
   • Resource ID: Use the resource-id attribute for locating elements by ID.
   • XPath: Appium Inspector generates the XPath for the selected element. Copy this XPath to use it in your test scripts.
   • Class Name: The class attribute can be used to locate elements by their class name.
   • Content Description: Useful for elements where accessibility is enabled.
4. Recording Actions:
   • Appium Inspector also allows you to record your interactions with the app. Click on the Record button to start recording actions such as clicks, swipes, and text inputs.
   • The recorded actions can be converted into Appium code snippets, providing a head start in writing your test scripts.

Using RobotQA Live Testing Page to Inspect Elements