Appium for Third Party apps on IOS

Support
1

I was wondering whether can we use Appium for third party application automation on IOS ?

My requirement is to automate the UI for third party apps like facebook, whatsapp etc. I just googled around and observed that we cannot control the UI of third party applications on IOS.

Also apple says the following on this:

“The Automation instrument only works with apps that are code signed with a development provisioning profile when they are built in Xcode. Apps signed with a distribution provisioning profile cannot be controlled with the UI Automation programming interface. However, because scripts run outside your app, the app version you are testing can be the same one you submit to the App Store, as long as you rebuild it with the distribution profile.”

Can we really automate third party apps on IOS with the help of appium ?

I am able to perform automation for third party apps on android with appium.

Please help!!!

Thanks

2

Hi,
I had the same challenge to run third party apps Youtube, Netflix,… and I couldn’t do it with appium.

  • Instead I implemented these tests with Sikuli, it’s not that perfect and its rely on image recognition algorithm… that means that you have to take picture for each element that you want to click on.
  • You dont have with this tool a real connection with the device and cant use xcrun instruments commands.
  • Need to connect to the iOS device with VNC in order to have it’s content displayed on the screen, and that can be achieved only with jailbreaked devices with a “Veency” (from Cydia) installed on it.

Bottom line, not that recommended,
and I wonder if someday we’ll have Appium & UiAutomator tools working with third party apps on iOS.

BR

1 Like