Feature Request: Add support for external activity discovery tools (e.g. activity_finder)

[jaxonister]

Hi Appium team,

I would like to propose a feature enhancement that may improve Android automation debugging and activity handling.

I have developed a lightweight open-source tool called activity_finder:
https://github.com/jaxonister/activity_finder

Problem

In real-world Appium automation, especially on Android, one common challenge is discovering:

• current foreground activities
• available activities in an app
• activity transitions during testing

This often requires multiple adb commands or manual inspection, which slows down debugging and test development.

Proposal

The tool activity_finder provides a simple way to:

• list and detect Android activities
• identify current running activity
• help quickly locate target activity for automation scripts

It could be useful if Appium could:

• integrate similar activity discovery capability
• or provide a plugin / hook interface for external tools
• or expose a standardized API for activity inspection

Why this matters

Better activity visibility would significantly improve:

• test stability
• debugging efficiency
• onboarding for new automation engineers

Optional integration idea

Even a simple command or extension like:

• driver.getCurrentActivity()
• driver.listActivities()

would help bridge this gap.

Conclusion

I believe this feature could improve Android automation workflows in Appium ecosystem, and I would be happy to contribute or discuss implementation ideas further.

Thanks for your time 🙌

[mykola-mokhnach]

thank you for the proposal @jaxonister

I think it makes sense to work on such functionality on a lower level, e.g. the appium driver code.
If we are talking about adding new features then consider working on a server plugin.

Btw, UIA2 driver already provides some APIs for activities discovery, for example https://github.com/appium/appium-uiautomator2-driver#mobile-getcurrentactivity