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Appium on Sauce Labs

Appium 1 End of Life

The Appium core team does not maintain Appium 1.x anymore since the 1st of January 2022. Recent versions of all officially supported platform drivers are no longer compatible with Appium 1.x, and require Appium 2 to run.

Sauce Labs still supports Appium 1.x (check our Platform Configurator to see which Appium 1 versions are available), but we recommend migrating to Appium 2.

For more information on migrating to Appium 2, see Migrating to Appium 2. For more information on installing Appium 2, see Installing Appium 2.

Looking to incorporate Appium in your mobile testing strategy? This page can help you understand the system architecture and installation requirements.

Appium is an automation testing framework that allows you to write tests using the Selenium syntax that are for use in testing native, mobile web, and hybrid apps on iOS and Android devices. Run your Appium tests on Sauce Labs to benefit from speed, parallelization, clear test result history, failure analysis, issue tracking, and more.

What You'll Need​

Installing Appium​

Appium is a client-server framework in which the user installs a client app locally that translates test session configuration details into requests to the remote Appium server, which processes them and responds with results and related material that Sauce Labs can then render into meaningful results in your dashboard. In order to use Appium, you must install both the server and a client.

Installing the Server​

You can install the Appium Server directly via NPM by running the following command:

npm install -g appium

Installing a Client​

The Appium client is the app in which you write your test scripts and instruct Appium how and where to run them. Appium provides client libraries for a variety of programming languages, so choose your favorite and download it to start creating tests for your mobile app or mobile browser app. Many of the examples throughout this documentation use the JavaScript WebDriverIO client.

Appium Doctor

Use Appium's dependency validator CLI appium-doctor to ensure your installation is ready to go for your Android or iOS tests.

Install the doctor: npm install -g appium-doctor. Run the command: appium-doctor --ios|--android

If you're using Appium 2.0, you can install Appium Inspector, which is basically an Appium client that includes a graphical user interface to specify which Appium server to use, which capabilities to set, and then interact with your app's elements, which can be very helpful in writing your tests.

How to Get Started​

  • Quickstart: Quickly set up a Java test environment and run a pre-configured working test using Appium to see if this is the right method for your mobile test objectives.
  • Real Devices: If you already have an Appium test infrastructure, set it up to test on Sauce Labs library of real devices.
  • Virtual Devices: You can also run your tests against Sauce Labs extensive combination of simulators and emulators for broader selection of devices and options.