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UI Automation Spy

Purpose

The UIAutomation Spy is used to inspect applications that contain Microsoft UIAutomation objects (e.g. Windows Presentation Framework, Silverlight or Java's Standard Widget Toolkit running on Windows).

spy_dialog_uiautomation_object

How to Open

In the main menu select Tools > Spy > UIAutomation. Then on the toolbar click UIAutomation Spy button.

Features

The UIAutomation Spy has the following features:

  • The Tree pane lets you view the hierarchy of UIAutomation objects available in the application
  • The Properties pane lets you view the exposed properties of the highlighted UIAutomation object
  • The Learn Object option is displayed when you use the Spy during recording and lets you pick specific objects to learn.

Commands

In addition to viewing the object hierarchy and object properties, you can perform the following tasks:

  • Parent - This selects the parent object of the one displayed
  • Highlight - This will attempt to Flash (highlight with a red rectangle) the object selected in the Spy.
  • Refresh - this simply refreshes the Spy view to reflect any changes that might have occurred in the application.
  • Save to File - this will save the properties of the currently selected object to a text file.
  • Save Type Information - this will save information about UI Automation object properties and patterns to a text file.

spy_dialog_uiautomation_popup

See Also