Speed Up Android Appium Test Automation

      There are three special capabilities available in Appium for speeding up Android test initialization (available in the latest Appium version). Also using the appPackage and appActivity desired capabilities instead of the app capability helps for speeding up Android test automation.

1. skipDeviceInitialization
2. skipServerInstallation
3. ignoreUnimportantViews

     skipDeviceInitialization is available for all Android platforms, this desired capability can be passed with the boolean value true to skip installing the io.appium.settings app on the device. This special app is installed by the Appium Android Driver at the beginning of each test and is used to manage specific settings on the device, such as:

• Wifi/data settings
• Disabling animation
• Setting a locale
• IME settings

Without the io.appium.settings app, the Appium Android driver cannot automate these functions, but if the device previously had this app installed by Appium, it doesn’t need to install it again. If you know that your device is already in the proper state then you can set skipDeviceInitialization to true and skip the time it takes to reinstall it. Appium already checks if the settings app is already installed on the device, but with this capability enabled it even skips the check to see if the app is installed.

     skipServerInstallation desired capability only applies when using the UiAutomator2 automation method. The way the UIAutomator2 driver works, it installs a special server onto the device, which listens to test commands from Appium and executes them. By default, Appium installs this server onto the device at the beginning of every test session. If the value of skipServerInstallation is set to true, you can skip the time it takes to install this server. Of course, without the server on the device Appium can’t automate it, but if you know that the server was installed during a previous test run you can safely skip this step.

   ignoreUnimportantViews desired capability is not new, but it deserves to be mentioned as another way to potentially speed up Android automation tests, especially if your tests focus on finding many elements using XPath locators. Set this to true to speed up Appium’s ability to find elements in Android apps.

     Another major time-saver when it comes to Android tests is using the appPackage and appActivity desired capabilities instead of the app capability. We need to tell Appium which app to test. Usually we use the app capability, which can be a path to a .apk, .apks, or .zip file stored on your computer’s filesystem or stored on a public website. If the app under test is known to already be installed on the device (most likely from a previous test run), the app package name and main activity can be passed instead (using appPackage and appActivity desired capabilities). Skipping the time to download a large file or install it on the Android operating system leads to big savings.

Below is the sample code which explain how can we use it in your automation script:

DesiredCapabilities caps = new DesiredCapabilities();
caps.setCapability(“platformName”, “Android”);
caps.setCapability(“deviceName”, “Android Emulator”);
caps.setCapability(“automationName”, “UiAutomator2”);
// App is already installed on device, so can be launched by Package name and Activity
caps.setCapability(“appPackage”, “io.cloudgrey.the_app”);
caps.setCapability(“appActivity”, “io.cloudgrey.the_app.MainActivity”);
// Skip the installation of io.appium.settings app and the UIAutomator 2 server.
caps.setCapability(“skipDeviceInitialization”, true);
caps.setCapability(“skipServerInstallation”, true);
caps.setCapability(“ignoreUnimportantViews”, true);
driver = new AppiumDriver(new URL(“http://localhost:4723/wd/hub”), caps);

Try to practice the above mentioned methods in your Android Automation and feel the difference in execution speed.

Reference: Appium Pro

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