Manage Appium Sessions

The Appium Vega Driver uses a session-based model to manage the connection between your test automation scripts and the Appium Server. You must create and configure an Appium session with appropriate capabilities to automate your apps.

Understand the capabilities for Appium session

Before you create your first session, it's important to understand the capabilities for each Appium session.

The Appium session is the fundamental unit of interaction between your test code and the Appium Server. When you create a new session, you're establishing a connection to the server and defining the target device, platform, and the app you want to automate.

Required capabilities

The following table lists the specific device, platform, and app you want to automate to establish a successful connection.

Optional capability

You can add appURL as optional capability to specify which app to launch during test run. Example values:

• com.amazon.frenchpress.main
• com.amazon.youtube.main

Create an Appium session

To create an Appium session for a Fire TV Stick, complete the following steps.

1. Get your device serial number.

   Copy code Copied to clipboard.

   vda devices
   

2. Set up capabilities.

   device_serial = "<Your device serial>"
   
   desired_caps = {
        "platformName": "Vega",
        "appium:automationName": "automation-toolkit/JSON-RPC",
        "kepler:device": f"vda://{device_serial}"
   }
   

3. Call the driver.createSession() method and pass the desired capabilities.

   Example:

   def appium_session():
       appium_options = AppiumOptions()
       appium_options.load_capabilities(desired_caps)
       driver = webdriver.Remote('http://127.0.0.1:4723', options=appium_options)
   

Example Appium session

Here's how an Appium session looks:

  device_serial = "<Your device serial>"

  desired_caps = {
      "platformName": "Vega",
      "appium:automationName": "automation-toolkit/JSON-RPC",
      "kepler:device": f"vda://{device_serial}"
	}

	def appium_session():
	    appium_options = AppiumOptions()
	    appium_options.load_capabilities(desired_caps)
	    driver = webdriver.Remote('http://127.0.0.1:4723', options=appium_options)

End your Appium session

To end an Appium session and release any associated resources, call the driver.quit(). Failing to end your session properly can lead to resource leaks and issues with subsequent test runs.

• Previous – Set Up Testing with Appium
• Next – Write Tests with Appium Vega Driver

Last updated: Sep 30, 2025