Trying to switch to custom chrome tab from native app causes the chrome instance to crash

Support
1

Hello,
In my application, when an user clicks on a button of a web view, it opens a page in a custom chrome instance(note this is not a web view but a separate chrome instance is opened).
I am trying to automate this with appium + webdriverIO but facing a challenge. The webview part is working fine but unable to get the custom chrome instance interaction working.
As I found in most of the articles online, they suggested to create a new instance of remote (i.e. WebDriverIO) with proper Android + Chrome related capabilties to be able to interact with this custom chrome instance.
I did so with below piece of code

//code to interact with webview using a separate driver. This part works fine

//new driver to interact with custom chrome instance
const chromeDriver = await remote({
        hostname: "localhost",
        port: 4723,
        capabilities: {
            platformName: "Android",
            "appium:deviceName": "Pixel_9_API_35",
            "appium:automationName": "UiAutomator2",
            browserName: "chrome",
            "appium:chromedriverExecutable": "Path to correct chromedriver version",
            "goog:chromeOptions": {
                    androidPackage: "com.android.chrome",
                    androidUseRunningApp: true,  // Connect to the already running instance
                    w3c: false

                } as any,
        }
    });

However, as soon as this chromedriver is initialized, the chrome instance in the emulator on which the desired url was opened closes(crashes)
Below message is what I see in the appium logs
DEBUG @wdio/appium-service: [727f3913][AndroidUiautomator2Driver@435d] [Instrumentation] io.appium.uiautomator2.server.test.AppiumUiAutomator2Server:INSTRUMENTATION_RESULT: shortMsg=Process crashed.

Is there a way I can get it to work? Any pointers would really be helpful

Thanks!

2

Use logcat to get the crash error. You can post it here but might need help from your developers to see what’s really going on here.

3

Thanks @wreed for the reply.
Attaching the logcat logs. I have only kept logs containing appium or chrome, as the size was getting too big.
device_logs.txt (1.6 MB)
In case you find something. Will also take help from our developers and try to get more info.

Regards,
Nishant Shah

4

Ok, is this the crash?

io.appium.uiautomator2.server.test/10216} → PackageSetting{b608d17 com.housinganywhere.app/10213} BLOCKED
02-20 20:35:27.743 571 2185 I AppsFilter: interaction: PackageSetting{3c73571 io.appium.settings/10207} → PackageSetting{b608d17 com.housinganywhere.app/10213} BLOCKED
02-20 20:35:35.870 571 2184 W ActivityManager: pid 8276 io.appium.uiautomator2.server sent binder code 1 with flags 2 to frozen apps and got error -32
02-20 20:35:35.891 8276 8290 E AndroidRuntime: Process: io.appium.uiautomator2.server, PID: 8276
02-20 20:35:35.907 571 954 I ActivityManager: Process io.appium.uiautomator2.server (pid 8276) has died: fg FGS
02-20 20:35:35.907 571 954 W ActivityManager: Crash of app io.appium.uiautomator2.server running instrumentation ComponentInfo{io.appium.uiautomator2.server.test/androidx.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner}
02-20 20:35:35.908 571 8905 I ActivityManager: Failure reporting to instrumentation watcher: comp=ComponentInfo{io.appium.uiautomator2.server.test/androidx.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner} results=Bundle[{shortMsg=Process crashed.}]

If your app is com.housinganywhere.app, I would want to know what process is BLOCKED and I’d bring this to the Devs. I don’t know your app so that’s about as deep as I can go.