Appium

Cross-platform test automation for native, hybrid, mobile web and desktop apps.

Appium is an open-source automation framework that provides WebDriver-based automation possibilities for a wide range of different mobile, desktop and IoT platforms. Appium is modular and extensible, and supports multiple programming languages, which means there is an entire ecosystem of related software:

Drivers add support for automating specific platforms
Clients allow writing Appium tests in your programming language of choice
Plugins allow to further extend Appium functionality

Upgrading From Older Versions

The Appium team only provides support for the most recent version of Appium. If you wish to upgrade from an older major Appium version, please refer to the migration guides:

Installation

Appium can be installed using npm (other package managers are not currently supported). Please check the installation docs for the system requirements and further information.

If upgrading from Appium 1, make sure Appium 1 is fully uninstalled (npm uninstall -g appium). Unexpected errors might appear if this has not been done.

npm i -g appium

Note that this will only install the core Appium server, which cannot automate anything on its own. Please install drivers for your target platforms in order to automate them.

Drivers

Appium supports app automation across a variety of platforms, like iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and more. Each platform is supported by one or more "drivers", which know how to automate that particular platform. You can find a full list of officially-supported and third-party drivers in Appium Ecosystem's Drivers page.

Driver management is done using Appium's Extension command-line interface:

# Install an official driver from npm (see documentation for a list of such drivers)
appium driver install <driver-name>
# Install any driver from npm
appium driver install --source=npm <driver-name>
# See documentation for installation from other sources

# List already installed drivers
appium driver list --installed
# Update a driver (it must be already installed)
# This will NOT update the major version, in order to prevent breaking changes
appium driver update <driver-name>
# Update a driver to the most recent version (may include breaking changes)
appium driver update <driver-name> --unsafe
# Uninstall a driver (it won't last forever, will it?)
appium driver uninstall <driver-name>

Clients

Client libraries enable writing Appium tests in different programming languages. There are officially-supported clients for Java, Python, Ruby, and .NET C#, as well as third-party clients for other languages. You can find a full list of clients in Appium Ecosystem's Clients page.

Plugins

Plugins allow you to extend server functionality without changing the server code. The main difference between drivers and plugins is that the latter must be explicitly enabled on Appium server startup (all installed drivers are enabled by default):

appium --use-plugins=<plugin-name>

You can find a full list of officially-supported and third-party plugins in Appium Ecosystem's Plugins page.

Similarly to drivers, plugin management is also done using Appium's Extension command-line interface:

# Install an official plugin from npm (see documentation for a list of such plugins)
appium plugin install <plugin-name>
# Install any plugin from npm
appium plugin install --source=npm <plugin-name>
# See documentation for installation from other sources

# List already installed plugins
appium plugin list --installed
# Update a plugin (it must be already installed)
# This will NOT update the major version, in order to prevent breaking changes
appium plugin update <plugin-name>
# Update a plugin to the most recent version (may include breaking changes)
appium plugin update <plugin-name> --unsafe
# Uninstall a plugin
appium plugin uninstall <plugin-name>

Server Command Line Interface

In order to start sending commands to the Appium server, it must be running on the URL and port where your client library expects it to listen. Appium's command-line interface is used to launch and configure the server:

# Start the server on the default host (0.0.0.0) and port (4723)
appium server
# You can also omit the 'server' subcommand
appium
# Start the server on the given host, port and use a custom base path prefix (the default prefix is '/')
appium --address 127.0.0.1 --port 9000 --base-path /wd/hub

Appium supports execution of parallel server processes, as well as parallel driver sessions within a single server process. Refer the corresponding driver documentations regarding which mode is optimal for the particular driver or whether it supports parallel sessions.

Why Appium?

You usually don't have to recompile your app or modify it in any way, due to the use of standard automation APIs on all platforms.
You can write tests with your favorite dev tools using any WebDriver-compatible language such as Java, Python, Ruby and C#. There are also third party client implementations for other languages.
You can use any testing framework.
Some drivers like xcuitest and uiautomator2 have built-in mobile web and hybrid app support. Within the same script, you can switch seamlessly between native app automation and webview automation, all using the WebDriver model that's already the standard for web automation.
You can run your automated tests locally and in a cloud. There are multiple cloud providers that support various Appium drivers (mostly targeting iOS and Android mobile automation).
Appium Inspector can be used to visually inspect the page source of applications across different platforms, facilitating easier test development.

Investing in the WebDriver protocol means you are betting on a single, free, and open protocol for testing that has become a web standard. Don't lock yourself into a proprietary stack.

For example, if you use Apple's XCUITest library without Appium, you can only write tests using Obj-C/Swift, and you can only run tests through Xcode. Similarly, with Google's UiAutomator or Espresso, you can only write tests in Java/Kotlin. Appium opens up the possibility of true cross-platform native app automation, for mobile and beyond!

If you are looking for a more comprehensive description of what this is all about, please read our documentation on How Does Appium Work?.