Use remote control navigation

Since smart TV devices don’t have a touch screen and user interaction happens via a remote control, remote control navigation becomes a primary feature for smart TV apps. Also, not all elements in the app have unique identifiers and those elements can be accessed via remote control navigation only.

Android TV (Fire TV/ Nvidia Shield)

Android keycodes can be used to control Amazon Fire TV Stick/ Nvidia Shield remote buttons. We can call the pressKey method (with the relevant keycode) to press any remote control button.

Example:

driver.pressKey(new KeyEvent(AndroidKey.DPAD_DOWN)); //Press DPAD_DOWN
driver.pressKey(new KeyEvent(AndroidKey.DPAD_RIGHT)); //Press DPAD_RIGHT

driver.pressKeycode(20); //Press DPAD_DOWN
driver.pressKeycode(22); //Press DPAD_RIGHT

driver.press_keycode(20) # DPAD_DOWN
driver.press_keycode(22) # DPAD_RIGHT

Here is a complete list of Fire TV/Nvidia Shield Remote buttons mapping:

TvOS (Apple TV 4k)

Appium provides Buttons actions via mobile: pressButton to perform remote controller based actions.

Example:

driver.executeScript("mobile: pressButton", ImmutableMap.of("name", "Home"));
driver.executeScript("mobile: pressButton", ImmutableMap.of("name", "Up"));

await driver.execute('mobile: pressButton', {name: 'Home'});
await driver.execute('mobile: pressButton', {name: 'Up'});

@driver.execute_script 'mobile: pressButton', { name: 'Home' }
@driver.execute_script 'mobile: pressButton', { name: 'Up' }

Here is a complete list of Apple TV Remote buttons mapping:

Roku TV (RokuOS 14.6)

For Roku TV, we utilize the robust capabilities of the Appium Roku driver. This driver allows you to interact with Roku devices using a comprehensive set of commands. Roku’s External Control Protocol (ECP) uses string literals for key presses, not numeric KeyCodes like Android.

For a detailed list of supported commands and their usage, you can refer to the official documentation Appium Roku driver on GitHub.