It aims to automate any mobile app from any language and any test framework, with full access to back-end APIs and DBs from test code. Write tests with your favorite dev tools using all the above programming languages, and probably more (with the Selenium WebDriver API and language-specific client libraries).

It is an open-source tool for automating native, mobile web, and hybrid applications on iOS mobile, Android mobile, and Windows desktop platforms. Native apps are those written using the iOS, Android, or Windows SDKs. Mobile web apps are web apps accessed using a mobile browser (the supports Safari on iOS and Chrome or the built-in ‘Browser’ app on Android). Hybrid apps have a wrapper around a “webview” — a native control that enables interaction with web content. Projects like Apache Cordova make it easy to build apps using web technologies that are then bundled into a native wrapper, creating a hybrid app.

Importantly, this is “cross-platform”: it allows you to write tests against multiple platforms (iOS, Android, Windows), using the same API. This enables code reuse between iOS, Android, and Windows testsuites.

For specific information about what it means for is to “support” its platforms, and automation modalities, please see the platform support doc.