Naming differences

There are some naming differences that add to the confusion when comparing Appium, Android, and iOS terminology. Specifically, when using AppiumBy.ID and AppiumBy.ACCESSIBILITY_ID.

To help with understanding, it is useful to use Appium Inspector to visualize the differences.

Appium Inspector displays two useful sections on the right-hand side, Find By and Attribute.

• Find By shows (some) locator strategies you could use to find the selected element, and the value it returns
• Attribute provides information on the element's properties, and their corresponding values

AppiumBy.ID

When locating an element using AppiumBy.ID, Appium looks for the following atributes:

• resource-id (Android)
• name (iOS)

AppiumBy.ACCESSIBILITY_ID

When locating an element using AppiumBy.ACCESSIBILITY_ID, Appium looks for the following attributes:

• content-desc (Android)
• name (iOS)

Appium Inspector

When inspecting the app with Appium Inspector you see the available strategies shown in the Find By section, and element attributes in the Attribute section.

Find By

For Android

• id shows the value of resource-id
• accessibility id shows the value of content-desc

For iOS

• accessibility id shows the value of name

Attribute

For Android

• resource-id shows the value of Resource ID
• content-desc shows the value of ContentDescription

For iOS

• name shows the value of accessibilityIdentifier (or accessibilityLabel if accessibilityIdentifier is not set)
• label shows the value of accessibilityLabel

Table: Locator strategies in Appium Inspector

The table below shows different locator strategies used in Appium, and corresponding attributes shown in Appium Inspector.

Appium Inspector	Android	iOS
id	resource-id	name
accessibility id	content-desc	name

Table: Element attributes in Appium Inspector

The table below shows different element attributes used by Appium, and corresponding properties that are set on mobile platforms.

Appium Inspector	Android	iOS
resource-id	Resource ID
content-desc	ContentDescription
name		accessibilityLabel / accessibilityIdentifier
label		accessibilityLabel

Note:

• accessibilityLabel is used by screen readers and should be written in a user-friendly manner
• accessibilityIdentifier should use a different format to avoid confusion and retain uniqueness

Additional resources

Check Mobile - element IDs for info on how to set the element ID.