How to Test an Android App in Offline Mode Using Appium with Ruby

There are many occasions where an app requires testing in offline mode, meaning the device has no internet connection—whether mobile data or WiFi. In this post, we will discuss how to put an Android device into offline mode using Appium.

What Does Offline Mode Mean?

When we say offline mode, it typically means enabling flight mode (airplane mode) on the device.

How to Toggle Offline Mode in Appium?

Appium with the ruby_lib supports API calls to toggle:

✅ Flight mode
✅ Mobile data
✅ WiFi

📌 Note: These commands only work for Android devices. You can find the official Appium documentation here.

Getting the Current Network Status

To check the current network status, use:

$driver.get_network_connection

This command returns an integer value representing the network state:

Setting the Network Connection

To change the network mode, use:

$driver.set_network_connection(6)

Here, 6 enables both WiFi and Mobile Data.

If you want to enable only Airplane Mode, set it to 0:

$driver.set_network_connection(0)

📌 Refer to the table above for more options.

Conclusion

Using Appium, we can easily test Android apps in offline mode by toggling network settings programmatically. This is helpful for testing network-dependent features like caching, error handling, and retry mechanisms.

Happy scripting! 😊