Appium currently has beta-level support for the Espresso automation technology via its own Espresso driver. This driver works by kicking off an Espresso run on a device, with our own automation server as part of the Espresso test APK. Appium can then communicate with this automation server and trigger Espresso commands as the result of Appium client calls.
Development of the Espresso driver happens at the appium-espresso-driver repo.
(If you don't want a beta driver, Appium's current standard Android automation driver is the UiAutomator2 Driver.)
In addition to Appium's general requirements:
- Java 7 installed and configured correctly for your platform
- Mac, Windows, or Linux OS with the ability to run the Android SDK
The way to start a session using the Espresso driver is to include the
automationName capability in your new session request, with
the value Espresso. Of course, you must also include appropriate
platformName (=Android), platformVersion, deviceName, and app
capabilities, at a minimum.
The Espresso driver currently supports a subset of the standard Android capabilities.
Setup for the Espresso driver basically entails getting the Android SDK and build tools ready to go. You can follow the instructions at the UiAutomator2 Driver doc, since the steps are the same.