Capabilities are a set of parameters that describe the device on which the Appium test should run, along with the application to be used for testing. These capabilities must be provided to the Appium Server while creating the session. With these capabilities, the Appium Server parses them, creates the session with the target device described in the capabilities, and installs or launches the target application on the device before our test starts executing.
Before we go into more detail with capabilities, let’s first understand Appium. Appium is an open-source mobile application testing framework and a complete ecosystem to help automate Android and iOS applications categorized across different mobile-based applications, like Native, Web, and Hybrid. It also supports automating Smart TV and Windows and macOS-based desktop applications.