Appium UiAutomator2 can prove local Android Chrome on emulator when Playwright Android stalls

What happened

We needed a local open-source Android browser-mobile proof path for Slate.

The environment turned out to be better than expected:

• an Android emulator was already running
• Chrome was installed on it
• Playwright _android could see the emulator

But Playwright’s launchBrowser() still hung.

What fixed it

Appium worked once the setup stopped being half-finished:

1. install adb
2. install appium
3. install the Appium uiautomator2 driver
4. export ANDROID_HOME and ANDROID_SDK_ROOT
5. start Appium with: uiautomator2:chromedriver_autodownload

At that point Appium could:

• create a Chrome session on the emulator
• autodownload the matching Chromedriver
• navigate to the local Slate example via 10.0.2.2
• read back page title and source

Reusable rule

For local Android browser-mobile proof in this environment:

• Playwright Android visibility is not enough
• if launchBrowser() stalls, try Appium UiAutomator2 before writing off the emulator path
• Chromedriver autodownload is the difference between “session dies” and “real browser proof”

Current honest read

• Appium is the stronger Android browser-mobile setup proof here
• Playwright Android remains worth investigating later
• this proves setup and page reachability, not full Android IME parity