One painful point that still exists with Appium, especially in iOS mobile application testing, is its reliance on WebDriverAgent, which creates a lot of stress during setup for beginners. Although many improvements have been made since MCP, that area still needs attention. Additionally, improvements in the locator strategies are needed to adapt to modern technologies for locating mobile applications developed outside traditional Apple or core scripting technologies like Swift, Java, or Kotlin. A community needs to emerge, driven by a set of industry leaders who can help people and contribute to the community, especially since platforms like Stack Overflow have diminished in relevance due to the rise of AI. If I could change or improve one thing about Appium, I would focus on enhancing Appium MCP to ensure it delivers what it promises reliably.
Senior Automation Test Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 10
Nov 11, 2024
The deployment process and configuration are quite complex and require improvement. Additionally, the wait time functionality could be enhanced as I experienced failures with longer wait times.
The installation part of Appium is somewhat clumsy, requiring numerous dependencies and configurations. Moreover, it consumes too much of your host machine's resources, potentially slowing down the machine.
Senior Test Consultant at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Aug 1, 2024
One area where I think Appium could improve is in addressing security concerns for our data. Currently, we're unable to use cloud solutions like CloudForm due to security restrictions on our servers. We also face challenges in updating packages for the same reason. It would be beneficial if the solution could provide better support for auto-reporting and easier connections to mobile device farms.
The solution's integration with the cloud-based setup needs improvement. Also, they should work on making the link text easily clickable. They should add an in-built framework. In addition, they should work on automatically updating the new versions for Android. Presently, we have to implement the pop-up updates manually. Due to the pipeline setup, the same updates fail to adapt to different mobile versions. They should also add a feature to automatically recognize the change of the locators and update the solution. It will save us a lot of time.
Mobile Apps and Web Development Technical Lead at Unfoldlabs
Real User
Nov 1, 2022
There is always a concern about the amount of code that is required to enhance the automation process. The idea of having less code or no code is what we would like to see in future updates. Increase performance, battery, load testing, and no-code less, more advanced topics which we can bring to the tool features. If we can make it lightweight and clear to understand and in an easy way, that will make this tool even more worthwhile.
Appium could improve by enabling record and run techniques similar to what they have in other licensing tools, such as Micro Focus. We have to all write the code, and then we can proceed.
Engineering manager I - Quality at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Sep 28, 2022
We previously worked with native applications, and there weren't any good mobile app testing tools. We started working with React Native, which works well with Appium, but it would be good to see better integration; the way elements are displayed can be messy. React Native is very popular nowadays, so it's essential to have that compatibility. Appium doesn't recognize IDs placed by our developers on nested elements when we use React Native for iOS; it just sees the whole page and one element. We use coordinates to get around this, but it isn't the best system, and nobody in the community has been able to help us. iOS is also strict in general when it comes to signatures and developer accounts, which creates additional headaches for iOS testing compared to Android. It would be great to see a more streamlined setup for iOS, but that might be more of an Apple issue than an Appium one.
The challenging part with Appium is that installation can be a bit tricky. It can be challenging to set up in Android versus iOS environments. Appium has some limitations in terms of writing code using simulators and online cloud devices. I faced challenges with native based scenarios, battery turn out percentage, battery charging percentage, and memory capacity. The other challenge I faced involved codes changing from device to device. For example, the piece of code that works in iOS version 10.1 won't work in iOS version 6.0. In upcoming releases, if they can reduce some more of the dependencies like SDK, UIAutomator, etc., it would be great. That is, I'd like to see a consolidated package or bundle release that is much more user-friendly.
Sr Data Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Sep 26, 2022
What needs improvement in Appium is its documentation. It needs to give more context on the libraries that Appium is using under the hood. For example, my team is using Appium for Android automation, and a lot of times, I feel that there's functionality that's available through the Appium interface, that exists within the UIAutomator, but there aren't a lot of useful or helpful resources on the internet to find that information, so it would be good to have some linkage with the underlying platform itself. Another room for improvement in Appium is that it's buggy sometimes. For example, at times, there's a bug in the inspector application that doesn't allow me to save my desired capability set, so it would be nice to get that bug fixed, but overall, Appium is a good tool. The Touch Actions functionality in Appium also needs improvement. For example, if I want to initiate a scroll on the device that I'm running Appium on, sometimes Swipe works, but in other situations, I have to explicitly use action chains, so I'm not too sure what's the better approach. What I'd like to see in the next version of Appium is a more intelligent and more intuitive AppiumLibrary, in terms of identifying menus and scroll bars, etc., because right now, I'm unsure if I have to do a lot of export reversals to get to the elements I'm looking for. It would be nice to have some functionality built in, which would allow me to easily get those exports.
There are Android and IOS, two key platforms. There are some other dependencies that typically are taken care of by some of the commercial tools like Xperitus. These kinds of tools take care of these other aspects. One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything. There needs to be some kind of recorder or some kind of platform which is made available. That would add immense value. It's already very popular, however, that will help a lot to experience the overall automation development.
Head of Solutions Delivery (Systems) at a wellness & fitness company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Feb 16, 2022
We haven't been able to fully leverage Appium for multiple reasons. I think number one is just that the tests take a long time to run. We have had some issues around just the results themselves and how predictable they are, but those are not issues with Appium directly. It's helped us to uncover issues that we otherwise wouldn't have known about. The challenge we have with Appium is we're currently writing the tests in Java, and it does make it difficult because now you need to find automation testers with a Java skillset. That's why we were looking at other tools like Eggplant that would allow us to automate mobile testing through easier mechanisms, like being able to record a manual test and automatically generate the test script for it. We're looking at faster automation and making automation more accessible to their technical people.
Quality and Testing Services Leader at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Jan 12, 2022
When doing mobile testing Appium is difficult as you can't use it for mobile testing in virtual machines. You need to have a physical machine. If Appium could manage this problem, and if it had more facility for configuration it would be a spectacular solution.
Automation and Nft Manager at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Sep 13, 2020
Stability is an area that needs some improvement. During execution, the Appium Studio experiences some intermittent disconnection. There are some paid solutions available on the market that have AI included with self healing, which means with changes in application script would detect automatically. The software is smart enough to show you unexpected changes. It can show you the options to change certain element locator which has changed with recent build. Maybe this additional feature can be added as a paid feature in future.
Architect - Automation at DMI (Digital Management, Inc.)
Real User
May 15, 2019
This product is still maturing, so at times there are issues with its stability if your scripts run continuously for more than fifteen to twenty hours. At times, we have witnessed the Appium server stop responding for forty to forty-five minutes. As a result, scripts do not move in this time period. Sometimes the connection resets due to USB or Network issues, which is not an Appium issue. There is no user interface because it is a complete development solution, and you have to code in Java. I do not see any room to include an interface in the near future, as is the case with other commercial automation tools. For iOS automation, it is very tedious to install or configure this particular library in your system, and it becomes very difficult to troubleshoot if you are not Mac and Xcode savvy. You require an understanding of the configuration of Xcode projects and you have to troubleshoot a lot of things at times. Configuration/Installation-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement in this solution, especially for the iOS platform.
Appium facilitates seamless automation of iOS and Android mobile applications, interfacing smoothly with CI/CD pipelines and enabling cross-platform development. Its open-source framework supports diverse coding languages, enhancing test automation.Appium stands out for its ability to automate mobile apps across multiple platforms, backed by a strong community and extensive language compatibility. It integrates with continuous integration and delivery workflows, with robust tools like Appium...
One painful point that still exists with Appium, especially in iOS mobile application testing, is its reliance on WebDriverAgent, which creates a lot of stress during setup for beginners. Although many improvements have been made since MCP, that area still needs attention. Additionally, improvements in the locator strategies are needed to adapt to modern technologies for locating mobile applications developed outside traditional Apple or core scripting technologies like Swift, Java, or Kotlin. A community needs to emerge, driven by a set of industry leaders who can help people and contribute to the community, especially since platforms like Stack Overflow have diminished in relevance due to the rise of AI. If I could change or improve one thing about Appium, I would focus on enhancing Appium MCP to ensure it delivers what it promises reliably.
The deployment process and configuration are quite complex and require improvement. Additionally, the wait time functionality could be enhanced as I experienced failures with longer wait times.
The installation part of Appium is somewhat clumsy, requiring numerous dependencies and configurations. Moreover, it consumes too much of your host machine's resources, potentially slowing down the machine.
The initial setup and configuration of an Appium project is tedious and challenging.
One area where I think Appium could improve is in addressing security concerns for our data. Currently, we're unable to use cloud solutions like CloudForm due to security restrictions on our servers. We also face challenges in updating packages for the same reason. It would be beneficial if the solution could provide better support for auto-reporting and easier connections to mobile device farms.
There is room for improvement in stability. It breaks down.
The tool needs to add a dependency manager.
The solution's integration with the cloud-based setup needs improvement. Also, they should work on making the link text easily clickable. They should add an in-built framework. In addition, they should work on automatically updating the new versions for Android. Presently, we have to implement the pop-up updates manually. Due to the pipeline setup, the same updates fail to adapt to different mobile versions. They should also add a feature to automatically recognize the change of the locators and update the solution. It will save us a lot of time.
There is always a concern about the amount of code that is required to enhance the automation process. The idea of having less code or no code is what we would like to see in future updates. Increase performance, battery, load testing, and no-code less, more advanced topics which we can bring to the tool features. If we can make it lightweight and clear to understand and in an easy way, that will make this tool even more worthwhile.
Appium could improve by enabling record and run techniques similar to what they have in other licensing tools, such as Micro Focus. We have to all write the code, and then we can proceed.
We previously worked with native applications, and there weren't any good mobile app testing tools. We started working with React Native, which works well with Appium, but it would be good to see better integration; the way elements are displayed can be messy. React Native is very popular nowadays, so it's essential to have that compatibility. Appium doesn't recognize IDs placed by our developers on nested elements when we use React Native for iOS; it just sees the whole page and one element. We use coordinates to get around this, but it isn't the best system, and nobody in the community has been able to help us. iOS is also strict in general when it comes to signatures and developer accounts, which creates additional headaches for iOS testing compared to Android. It would be great to see a more streamlined setup for iOS, but that might be more of an Apple issue than an Appium one.
The challenging part with Appium is that installation can be a bit tricky. It can be challenging to set up in Android versus iOS environments. Appium has some limitations in terms of writing code using simulators and online cloud devices. I faced challenges with native based scenarios, battery turn out percentage, battery charging percentage, and memory capacity. The other challenge I faced involved codes changing from device to device. For example, the piece of code that works in iOS version 10.1 won't work in iOS version 6.0. In upcoming releases, if they can reduce some more of the dependencies like SDK, UIAutomator, etc., it would be great. That is, I'd like to see a consolidated package or bundle release that is much more user-friendly.
What needs improvement in Appium is its documentation. It needs to give more context on the libraries that Appium is using under the hood. For example, my team is using Appium for Android automation, and a lot of times, I feel that there's functionality that's available through the Appium interface, that exists within the UIAutomator, but there aren't a lot of useful or helpful resources on the internet to find that information, so it would be good to have some linkage with the underlying platform itself. Another room for improvement in Appium is that it's buggy sometimes. For example, at times, there's a bug in the inspector application that doesn't allow me to save my desired capability set, so it would be nice to get that bug fixed, but overall, Appium is a good tool. The Touch Actions functionality in Appium also needs improvement. For example, if I want to initiate a scroll on the device that I'm running Appium on, sometimes Swipe works, but in other situations, I have to explicitly use action chains, so I'm not too sure what's the better approach. What I'd like to see in the next version of Appium is a more intelligent and more intuitive AppiumLibrary, in terms of identifying menus and scroll bars, etc., because right now, I'm unsure if I have to do a lot of export reversals to get to the elements I'm looking for. It would be nice to have some functionality built in, which would allow me to easily get those exports.
Appium has problems with automated validations following iOS updates, causing us to have to validate manually. Its execution speed is also very slow.
I can’t think of an area that needs improvement currently. The setup and installation were a problem for us at first. Tests can take a long time.
There are Android and IOS, two key platforms. There are some other dependencies that typically are taken care of by some of the commercial tools like Xperitus. These kinds of tools take care of these other aspects. One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything. There needs to be some kind of recorder or some kind of platform which is made available. That would add immense value. It's already very popular, however, that will help a lot to experience the overall automation development.
We haven't been able to fully leverage Appium for multiple reasons. I think number one is just that the tests take a long time to run. We have had some issues around just the results themselves and how predictable they are, but those are not issues with Appium directly. It's helped us to uncover issues that we otherwise wouldn't have known about. The challenge we have with Appium is we're currently writing the tests in Java, and it does make it difficult because now you need to find automation testers with a Java skillset. That's why we were looking at other tools like Eggplant that would allow us to automate mobile testing through easier mechanisms, like being able to record a manual test and automatically generate the test script for it. We're looking at faster automation and making automation more accessible to their technical people.
When doing mobile testing Appium is difficult as you can't use it for mobile testing in virtual machines. You need to have a physical machine. If Appium could manage this problem, and if it had more facility for configuration it would be a spectacular solution.
Stability is an area that needs some improvement. During execution, the Appium Studio experiences some intermittent disconnection. There are some paid solutions available on the market that have AI included with self healing, which means with changes in application script would detect automatically. The software is smart enough to show you unexpected changes. It can show you the options to change certain element locator which has changed with recent build. Maybe this additional feature can be added as a paid feature in future.
This product is still maturing, so at times there are issues with its stability if your scripts run continuously for more than fifteen to twenty hours. At times, we have witnessed the Appium server stop responding for forty to forty-five minutes. As a result, scripts do not move in this time period. Sometimes the connection resets due to USB or Network issues, which is not an Appium issue. There is no user interface because it is a complete development solution, and you have to code in Java. I do not see any room to include an interface in the near future, as is the case with other commercial automation tools. For iOS automation, it is very tedious to install or configure this particular library in your system, and it becomes very difficult to troubleshoot if you are not Mac and Xcode savvy. You require an understanding of the configuration of Xcode projects and you have to troubleshoot a lot of things at times. Configuration/Installation-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement in this solution, especially for the iOS platform.