App and Device Control

The session is created and the app prepared on the device, but nothing is brought to the foreground. The test starts it: mobile: activateApp or mobile: startActivity on Android, mobile: launchApp on Apple platforms.

On Android, mobile: changePermissions revokes the camera permission on the harvest-log package. On an Apple Simulator, mobile: setPermission writes the denial for its bundle. On a real iPhone the state is unreachable: only mobile: resetPermission runs there, and it clears.

Apple's XCUITest driver reaches web content over the device's remote debugger, so the build must have debuggable web views, a real device needs Web Inspector enabled, and remoteDebugProxy routes that traffic through an external proxy when it cannot go direct.

Android System WebView updates independently of the OS, so one pinned Chromedriver cannot fit every phone. Ship a folder of builds, let each session pick per device, and keep the Apple half on debuggable builds and device settings instead.

Converge on the explicit execute methods both platforms have — UiAutomator2's acceptAlert and dismissAlert on Android, XCUITest's alert on iOS — behind one wrapper, and treat appium:autoAcceptAlerts as an iOS-only safety net rather than as the policy.

Keep a thin shared block, then one explicit block per platform: only browserName and the standard W3C keys are truly shared, while the driver, the browser and every Safari preference diverge. Assert identical outcomes, never identical setup.

Make the gap explicit rather than hiding it. Keep the in-place clear on Android and on Apple Simulators, let the helper fail loudly on an Apple real device, and decide per tier which cases are allowed to run there.

Keep one verb in the suite and one adapter per platform. The command names match on Android and Apple platforms, so what an adapter varies is the artifact, the app identifier, and whether split APKs need UiAutomator2's multi-apk install.

Express the intent, not the command: the layer takes a permission and a wanted state, and each platform adapter reaches it its own way. Because Apple real devices can only clear a decision, it must refuse states it cannot reach, loudly.

On iOS, XCUITest's acceptAlertButtonSelector and dismissAlertButtonSelector name which button the accept or dismiss action presses, overriding the driver's default choice; autoClickAlertSelector covers a click on any alert. Android's UiAutomator2 driver has no equivalent setting.

Use it when an Android build ships as separate split APKs rather than one file. UiAutomator2's mobile: installMultipleApks lands the whole split set in one transaction; mobile: installApp takes a single artifact, and Apple platforms have no multi-artifact twin.