Determine android app activity name using adb

When setup Appium driver options for Android, we need to specify app activity. Something like this:

_driverOptions.AddAdditionalCapability("appActivity", "*.MainActivity");

Or if app has a SplashActivity then we need to wait for the MainActivity

_driverOptions.AddAdditionalCapability("appWaitActivity", "*.MainActivity");

It is quite common for app main activity to be com.example.app.mainActivity. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes, main activity can be named differently.

One example of this is apps that built using xamarin, by defaut, if no activity name is specified by developer. The main activity will be appended with a hash to help avoiding namespace conflict. More details can be read here.

Without the correct activity name specified, Appium will throw this error:

 Error: Error occured while starting App. Original error: Activity used to start app doesn't exist or cannot be launched! Make sure it exists and is a launchable activit

Determine running activity using adb

Install adb

On Mac

brew install android-platform-tools

Find activity name using adb

First, determine device id using adb devices

adb devices

Output:

List of devices attached
e1418fa6	device

Next, open device shell

 adb -s e1418fa6 shell

Launch the app we want to find activity name

Then run this command

dumpsys window windows | grep -E 'mCurrentFocus'    

This will output the name of the current focus activity: Example output

OnePlus3T:/ $ dumpsys window windows | grep -E 'mCurrentFocus' 
  mCurrentFocus=Window{844329b u0 com.whatsapp/com.whatsapp.registration.EULA}
OnePlus3T:/ $