Reviving Windows App Automation NovaWindows Driver for Appium 2
summary
NovaWindows Driver implements Appium 2 protocol and claims 10x faster element interaction by running a single PowerShell-backed UIAutomation session, calling low‑level Win32 APIs via FFI, and replacing WinAppDriver’s proxy process. It adds custom commands like setValue custom command and push cache request to set text directly, invoke elements without scrolling, and expose row‑view elements. Tests show multi‑second runs versus ~16s on WinAppDriver, it preserves Appium compatibility by only changing automationName, is in early production use, and the repo is newly published.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:10Desktop automation today
- 4:19Appium Windows driver problems
- 11:33Nova Windows driver
- 12:16Performance improvements
- 13:42Custom text input commands
- 16:10Faster XPath element finding
- 20:41Hidden UI elements cache
- 22:30Nova vs WinApp demo
- 25:41Nova driver architecture
- 28:32Installing Nova driver
- 30:41Q&A
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