Appium-based framework for testing desktop app (not web)

Question

Anyone had experience in automating desktop applications (not web)? I need an Appium-like solution to integrate it with my mobile automation (written on Appium, Java).

Our company has a messenger client on 3 platforms: Android, iOS and desktop. Client data is synchronized between these platforms. We already have a basic automation for mobile platforms (using Appium). Now I need to develop automation for desktop.

I want an Appium-like solution, so it would be easy to integrate with our mobile automation. I found WinAppDriver, but it is for Windows only. Most likely our desktop app will be cross-platform (Windows, Mac OS, Linux).

Is there any solution simular to WinAppDriver, but cross-platform?

Our desktop app is based on Electron, so probably I could test it with Spectron (it is cross-platform). But I doubt that the integration with Appium will be fine.

Answer 1

An electron based application running on desktop is quite similar to a web-app running on chrome browser. Spectron gives all the extra capabilities required for web-driver based automation. So, in order to develop automation for desktop, you can use similar principles like you would used for Selenium based automation framework. Integration with Appium would seem unnecessary. You might want to look into solutions like Serenity BDD and Codecept JS for creating better qa services for cross platform applications.