Settings

Settings are a new concept introduced by appium. They are currently not a part of the Mobile JSON Wire Protocol, or the Webdriver spec.

Settings are a way to specify the behavior of the appium server.

Settings are: - Mutable, they can be changed during a session - Only relevant during the session they are applied. They are reset for each new session. - Control the way the appium server behaves during test automation. They do not apply to controlling the app or device under test.

An example of a setting would be ignoreUnimportantViews for Android. Android can be set to ignore elements in the View Hierarchy which it deems irrelevant. Setting this can cause tests to run faster. A user who wants to access the ignored elements however, would want to disable ignoreUnimportantViews, and reenable it afterwards.

Another example of a use-case for settings would be telling appium to ignore elements which are not visible.

Settings are implemented via the following API endpoints:

POST /session/:sessionId/appium/settings

Expects a JSON hash of settings, where keys correspond to setting names, and values to the value of the setting.

{
  settings: {
   ignoreUnimportantViews : true
  }
}

GET /session/:sessionId/appium/settings

Returns a JSON hash of all the currently specified settings.

{
  ignoreUnimportantViews : true
}

Note that the actual commands you would use in your test script differ based on the language; see the specific Appium client documention for more information.

Supported Settings

Name	Description	Values
ignoreUnimportantViews	Boolean which sets whether Android devices should use setCompressedLayoutHeirarchy() which ignores all views which are marked IMPORTANT_FOR_ACCESSIBILITY_NO or IMPORTANT_FOR_ACCESSIBILITY_AUTO (and have been deemed not important by the system), in an attempt to make things less confusing or faster. false by default.	false or true
allowInvisibleElements	For UiAutomator2 Driver. Boolean which set whether Android device should show all elements, visible and invisible. false by default.	false or true

Android UiAutomator Configurator

sets UiAutomator Configurator timeouts and delays in Android devices. only works in Android API 18 and above.

"actionAcknowledgmentTimeout" - Int which is the same as setActionAcknowledgmentTimeout. If a negative value is given, it would set to default(3 * 1000 milliseconds)

"keyInjectionDelay" - Int which is the same as setKeyInjectionDelay. If a negative value is given, it would set to default(0 milliseconds)

"scrollAcknowledgmentTimeout" - Int which is the same as setScrollAcknowledgmentTimeout. If a negative value is given, it would set to default(200 milliseconds)

"waitForIdleTimeout" - Int which is the same as setWaitForIdleTimeout. If a negative value is given, it would set to default(10 * 1000 milliseconds)

"waitForSelectorTimeout" - Int which is the same as setWaitForSelectorTimeout. If a negative value is given, it would set to default(10 * 1000 milliseconds)