Appium Desktop won't open for Ionic App

Question

I am currently trying to automate an ionic app using Appium and Python. I have the Appium Desktop version 1.7.2 installed.

However, if I try opening any ionic app using Appium Desktop, it hangs at the loading screen and the app never shows up for the ui elements to be interacted with.

The app opens perfectly fine in the emulator though

My capabilities are

{
  "app": "/Users/zac/Downloads/Demo_ionic.apk",
  "platformName": "Android",
  "platformVersion": "8",
  "deviceName": "Pixel 2 XL"

}

I have even tried setting the autoWebview to true but it just opens the browser , which I don't want right now.

Any solutions would be highly appreciated. The apk can be found here : https://apkpure.com/constantine-ionic-demo/com.ionicframework.constantine199683

I have tried with multiple ionic .apk files and none of them seem to work on Appium desktop. I am having no problem getting the native apps to open on it, so I think I am missing something here.

Answer 1

Perhaps you have to add this setting for the automation methods :

"automationName": "UiAutomator2"

It works for me.