Appium Desktop has been released

Appium Desktop has been released

  3:30 AM    Unknown

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Appium Desktop has been released for a while. This article is a brief introduction for this new app. Appium Desktop is a new open source app for Windows, Mac and Linux which is a GUI interface for using appium and inspecting your app's elements. Please be noticed that Appium Desktop is not the same as Appium. It is a combination of Appium with graphical interface and other tools.

Some cons of Appium Desktop:

• Has GUI for Appium Server. You are able to set options, set ports, set path for logs,...Launching sessions is also possible without running code.
• An inspector mechanism is added to inspect you app's structure without running other apps. You can also perform basic actions on it like tapping or sending keys.
• Running faster than the old Appium GUI app. 
• Able to work with Appium 1.6.0 or more.
• No need to install via NPM. Installation is done just by downloading the exe/dmg/zip file.

Download: 
You can download it from this page. Currently, the latest one is 1.0.2-beta.2. Auto update is also provided whenever there is a newer version available.

Usage:

• Start server: 

We can start a simple server or advanced option server.

• Start session:

After starting the server, we will go to the server console output window which allows starting a new session or stopping the server. You can also get the server in this console windows instead of the log file which is configurable during starting server with advanced options.

• New Session windows:

The New Session window allows you to construct a set of Appium desired capabilities used to launch an Appium session.

• Inspector:

After the session is started, you are able to inspect your app's structure.

For more information about Appium Desktop, please visit its official github page. You can also check out this video

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Improve Android Genymotion Emulator performance for mobile automation testing

Improve Android Genymotion Emulator performance for mobile automation testing

  2:18 AM    Unknown

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1. Change the resolution: Open Genymotion --> Select Configurate this virtual device --> Reduce the ScreenSize - Density.

2. Disable Animations:

• Enable developer mode by going to Settings > About phone, then tap on Build number several times to enable it

• Go to Settings > Developer options, and scroll down to Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale. Turm off all of them

• Some people reported that turning off animation may cause stranger behavior in some apps. Follow this article for more information HERE

Note: if you are not using the Genymotion emulator but the emulator from Android SDK, you can follow this topic to make it run faster HERE

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How to update Appium server

How to update Appium server

  7:06 AM    Unknown

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Appium 1.6.0 has released a while. Below are steps to update Appium from old version to newest version (1.6.0). Note that Appium 1.6.0 is the Appium server version. It is different with the Appium GUI version which highest version is stilll 1.5.3:
- Update Xcode to newest (8.1): go to Appstore --> search for xcode --> update --> open Xcode to accept license
- Update Appium server:
npm update -g appium
- add desired_caps['automationName'] = 'XCUITest'
- Fix some issues:
+ https://github.com/appium/appium/issues/6978
* use this command: npm install -g appium --no-shrinkwrap
+ install carthage: brew install carthage
+ https://github.com/appium/appium/issues/7242
+ some xpath does not work --> use accessibilityid or XCUI
+ sudo /usr/sbin/DevToolsSecurity --enable

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