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UI Automator Viewer: What Is It And How To Use It

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Alexander Mishchenko edited this page Oct 8, 2020 · 1 revision

UI Automator Viewer is a program from Android SDK tools. Unfortunately, the easiest way to get SDK tools is to download and install Android Studio from the official site. It won't be necessary to use Android Studio itself though.

UI Automator Viewer lets us make special Android screenshots, that contain not only a picture of the screen, but also a layout hierarchy. Simply speaking, it lets us understand how Instagram is built and how we can interact with Instagram interface with our bot.

How to use UI Automator Viewer

Make sure that you've connected your Android device and adb sees it (adb devices prints your device ID). If it's not, follow instructions on the main page. If you've successfully installed Android Studio, then uiautomatorviewer can be usually found in

  • C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Android\sdk\tools\bin for Windows
  • ~/Library/Android/sdk/tools/bin for macOS (press Shift+command+. in Finder to see hidden folders)
  • ~/Android/sdk/tools/bin for Ubuntu

It can be launched simply by double-clicking. You will see something like this:

uiautomatorviewer

Now all you have to do is to press 1. Device Screenshot and 2. Save. You'll get two files: *.png and *.uix, describing what there's currently on your Android device's screen.

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