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Appium Inspector

Introduction​

TV Labs supports the use of Appium Inspector for debugging Appium sessions. Appium Inspector is a desktop and web application interface built for the Appium test automation framework useful for debugging and developing Appium scripts on real devices. Support for TV Labs as a cloud provider is available in Appium Inspector from version 2025.3.1 onwards.

What to expect:

  • ⏱️ Duration: 5 minutes
  • 🎯 Audience: Developers interested in using Appium Inspector for debugging Appium sessions on the TV Labs platform
  • 🧠 Outcome: Understanding how to connect to a TV Labs device using Appium Inspector

Also see: The official Appium Inspector Github repository provides information on using Appium Inspector.

Prerequisites​

Before beginning, you will need a couple things:

  • A TV Labs device with the Appium Inspector plugin installed.
  • Access to the Appium Inspector desktop application or web interface.

To install the Appium Inspector desktop application, go to the Appium Inspector Github Releases page and download the latest version for your device.

Connecting to a TV Labs device​

Connecting to a TV Labs device through the Appium Inspector is very similar to configuring a regular Appium script: you will need to create a set of capabilities and provide an API key to connect to the platform. For more details on available capabilities, see the Appium Scripting documentation.

In this example, we will connect to a Roku device. First open the Appium Inspector and select "TV Labs" as the cloud provider.

Appium Inspector Providers List

Next, if you don't already have an API key, create one in the API Keys page. If you already have an API key, you can skip this step.

Now we can begin to configure the capabilities to access a Roku device:

  • Add a tvlabs:build capability with the build ID of a Roku application.
  • Add a tvlabs:constraints capability with the constraints for the Roku platform.

Appium Inspector Capabilities for Roku

Now click "Create Session" and the Appium Inspector will connect to the TV Labs device and open the Roku application specified in the tvlabs:build capability.

Roku App in the Appium Inspector

Congratulations! You are now connected to a TV Labs device using Appium Inspector.

info

To see live playback of your session, visit the Sessions page and select the session you created.

Limitations​

The Appium Inspector is a powerful tool for debugging Appium sessions, but there are some limitations. The capabilities of the Inspector are limited to the functionality supported by the underlying driver. To see which drivers are used for which platforms, see the Platforms section of the Appium Scripting documentation.