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Android App Bundle (.aab)

The UiAutomator2 driver supports the Android App Bundle feature. This feature allows generating an .aab file, which is meant for uploading to the Google Play Store.

Generating the App Bundle

An .aab file can be managed via CLI using the official bundletool, which is available from Google's GitHub repo. Google's App Bundle guide can also help understand the feature.

Running Tests

Before testing with Appium, the .aab file should be converted to an .apks file. Appium added support for .apks files in these PRs.

  1. Ensure bundletool.jar is available in PATH
    • Appium will look for bundletool.jar. Ensure the path can be found with which 'bundletool.jar'.
    • bundletool version should be above 1.6.0

  2. Generate the .apks file from the .aab file

    • .aab is available since Android Studio 3.2
    • Generating .apks from .aab requires app signing
    $ java -jar apks/bundletool.jar build-apks \
    --bundle apks/release/release/app.aab \ # Path to the input .aab file
    --output apks/AppBundleSample.apks \    # Path to the .apks file
    --ks apks/sign \                        # Signing keystore
    --ks-key-alias key0 \                   # Alias of the keytstore
    --ks-pass pass:kazucocoa \              # Password of the keystore
    --overwrite                             # Overwrite any existing apks files

  3. Use the path to the .apks file in the appium:app capability.

    # Ruby
capabilities = {
    platformName: :android,
    automationName: 'uiautomator2',
    platformVersion: '8.1',
    deviceName: 'Android Emulator',
    app: "path/to/the.apks",   # This line is important
    fullReset: true,
    ...
}

core = ::Appium::Core.for capabilities: capabilities
driver = core.start_driver

The .apks bundle can also be installed using mobile: installApp:

# Ruby
driver.execute_script 'mobile: installApp', {appPath: 'path/to/your.apks'}

Tips

Make bundletool.jar executable

This can be done by running chmod 655 /path/to/bundletool.jar, for example.

Test with different languages

Set appium:fullReset to true if testing the app with different language resources.

Appium only installs the minimum set of resources, following the behavior of the appbundle feature. For example, if a device's language is set of English, Appium will only install the en resource, with any other languages being absent.

Example Project