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Last updated on : 09 Jan 2026

Enabling Self Healing Plugin in Appium

Overview Pcloudy provides a Self-Healing Plugin that automatically repairs automation scripts when application UI elements or locators change between builds.

During automation testing, scripts often fail because:

• UI elements are modified
• Object locators change between releases

With the Self-Healing Plugin, Pcloudy uses an AI-based mechanism to detect these changes and auto-update locators, ensuring smoother execution and reduced script failures. This feature is compatible with Appium automation scripts and improves overall script reliability and execution success.

Key Advantages of Self-Healing

1. Improved Script Stability

• Automatically heals scripts when element locators change
• Reduces failures caused by updated builds or UI changes

2.Reduced Maintenance Effort

• Minimizes manual script updates
• Saves hours of debugging and locator fixes for automation engineers

3.Efficient CI/CD Pipelines

• Stable automation scripts ensure consistent test results
• Faster and smoother CI pipeline execution

Limitations

• Supported only for Android native applications
• Supported locator attribute: id

Prerequisites

Before enabling Self-Healing, ensure:

• You are registered on the Pcloudy platform
• You have:
  • One stable build
  • One recent (updated) build for comparison

Steps to Enable Self-Healing

Step 1: Run Automation on the Stable Build

Execute your automation suite on the stable build with the following capabilities enabled.

Required Capabilities (Stable Build)

// Application Name

Java

capabilities.setCapability("appium:pcloudy_ApplicationName", "Version1.apk");

// Enable locator extraction

Java

**capabilities.setCapability("appium:extract", true);**

// Set project name

Java

**capabilities.setCapability("appium:project", "healing7");**

// Set build name

Java

**capabilities.setCapability("appium:build", "test7");**

Purpose:
This step extracts and stores element locators from the stable build.

Step 2: Train the Self-Healing Engine Using the Recent Build

Run the automation on the recent build 4–5 times to allow the AI engine to learn and map locator changes.

Required Capabilities (Recent Build)

Java

// Recent application name
capabilities.setCapability("appium:pcloudy_ApplicationName", "build-2.apk");

// Enable self-healing

capabilities.setCapability("appium:healing", true);

// Set project name

capabilities.setCapability("appium:project", "healing7");

// Set build name

capabilities.setCapability("appium:build", "test7");

Purpose:

This step enables the AI-based healing engine to detect and adapt to locator chang

Step 3: Execution Behavior

During execution:

• The test may initially fail due to locator changes
• The Self-Healing engine automatically handles the failure
• The script re-executes with updated locators
• Test execution completes successfully

Summary

Self-Healing Plugin: Auto-updates element locators when UI changes AI-Based Learning: Becomes smarter with repeated executions Reduced Failures: Delivers consistent and reliable test results Lower Maintenance: Saves time by reducing manual script fixes