With UIAutomatorViewer (recommanded)

Install UIAutomatorviewer on your PC

• Install Android Studio if you don’t have it

• Open Android Studio

• Click on More Actions > SDK Manager (or Tools > SDK Manager if a project is open)

• Click on the SDK tools tab, uncheck option "Hide Obsolete Packages"

• Check option “Android SDK Tools” and install version 26.1.1

• UIautomatorviewer is now installed in Android SDK directory

Default path for linux :

$HOME\Android\Sdk\tools\bin

Default path for mac :

$HOME/Library/Android/sdk/tools/bin

Default path for windows :

c:\USERS\USER\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk\tools\bin (replace USER by your user profile)

Launching UIAutomatorviewer without installing a JDK 1.8 (recommended)

To avoid installing a different version of java, you could :

set environment variables for your PC profile

After adding the variables, you can open a new terminal (this is important to open a new terminal to take into account the variable you have just set) and use the following command to open uiautomatorviewer :

For Windows :

java -Xmx1600M -Dcom.android.uiautomator.bindir="%ANDROID_HOME%\tools" -cp "%ANDROID_HOME%\tools\lib\x86_64\swt.jar";"%ANDROID_HOME%\tools\lib\*" com.android.uiautomator.UiAutomatorViewer

For Linux :

java -Xmx1600M -Dcom.android.uiautomator.bindir="$ANDROID_HOME/tools" -cp "$ANDROID_HOME/tools/lib/x86_64/swt.jar":"$ANDROID_HOME/tools/lib/*" com.android.uiautomator.UiAutomatorViewer  

• The following program appears :

Launching Uiautomatorviewer with installation of JDK 1.8

• On Linux, do this on a new terminal :

# Install java 8
sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk
# Check java version
java -version
# Update the java default version use by your system (if you have several)
sudo update-alternatives --config java

• On Windows, install Java 8 by getting it on Oracle site web, need to create an account

• On Linux, on a new terminal, go to the directory “$HOME/Android/Sdk/tools/bin” and tap the following command :

uiautomatorviewer

• On Windows, on a new terminal, go to the directory “C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk\tools\bin” and tap the following command:

uiautomatorviewer.bat

• The following program appears :

Using UIAutomatorviewer

when UIAutomatorviewer is opened, you can

• Plug your usb on your smartphone

• Click on button “Device screenshot”

• A screen capture and a dump of view hierarchy appears on the screen

• On screenshot (left), you can select the element for which you want to retrieve information and find it on the right:

• In this case, the tab “Actu” have the field ‘text’ set with ‘Actu’. So in GDSL we can search the text Actu to find this tab (if there is no other element with the same text in the screen).

• Each element of a view can be retrieve by field ‘text’, ‘resource-id’, ‘class’ or ‘content-desc’. GDSL commands are made to find an element by searching on this field

  • clickById,exampleid : click on an element which have exampleid in resource-id field

  • waitUntilText,Actu : Wait an element which have ‘Actu’ in text field

Via Accessibility Scanner

An alternative to UIAutomatorviewer could be to use Accessibility Scanner directly on your phone

1. Download on Playstore on your smartphone

2. For more information https://support.google.com/accessibility/android/answer/6376570?hl=en