Maestro CLI 2.8.0: swipe from any point inside an element

This release adds two authoring capabilities and lands a set of reliability fixes. swipe can start from a chosen point inside an element, variables work in permissions and screenshot thresholds, and Maestro Cloud uploads and reports get several fixes, including JUnit and HTML reports that link straight into the Cloud UI.

Flow authoring

• Swipe from a point inside an element. swipe.from accepts an optional point in the same format as tapOn (percentage like "50%, 85%" or absolute "x, y"), resolved against the matched element’s bounds. Useful for composite layouts where the element’s center sits on a nested scrollable (an outer card containing an image pager) and for swipe-to-confirm gestures. Omitting point keeps the current center behavior.
• Variables (${VAR}) in more places. launchApp.permissions and setPermissions values now accept variables (permission keys stay literal by design), and so does assertScreenshot.thresholdPercentage. One flow file can drive permission grants and screenshot tolerances across environments.
• childOf waits for the screen to settle. childOf selectors now refresh the view hierarchy on each retry, matching how top-level selectors already behave. A tapOn followed by a copyTextFrom with a childOf parent resolves against the current screen; previously that sequence needed an assertVisible on the parent first. Deeply nested childOf chains also fail within one timeout window on genuinely missing elements.

Device handling

• Android emulator boot has a bounded timeout. Boot waits up to 3 minutes by default, configurable via MAESTRO_DEVICE_BOOT_TIMEOUT. A hung or crashed boot fails within the timeout with a clear error.
• setDeviceLocale on Android is faster. Maestro checks the current locale first and skips the change when it already matches. When a change is needed, the broadcast fires detached and completion is confirmed via getprop, so locale changes complete in seconds.
• startDevice locale targets the right device. The requested locale is applied to the device that was just started, fixing multi-device setups where the locale could land on an unrelated device on the host.
• iOS enumeration works on hosts without devicectl. If devicectl is missing or unavailable (older macOS), physical-device listing is skipped and simctl-listed devices are still returned.

Maestro Cloud

• Uploads retry only when it’s safe. The CLI resends an upload only when the server could not have received the request. Uploads whose outcome is unknown (read timeout, gateway 502) stop and prompt you to check whether the upload landed. Read timeout is now 15 minutes, and removing the 5-minute call timeout restores the backend’s 4 GB max upload.
• Cleaner errors for artifact paths. takeScreenshot and startRecording paths are validated up front. Blank paths, paths naming no file, and (in bundled runs) absolute paths or paths escaping the command’s folder fail with InvalidCommand before any file work. Write failures surface as DestinationIsNotWritable, a flow error.
• onFlowEnd runs even when onFlowComplete fails. Any teardown exception is caught, so device logs and manifest.json are collected on the failed runs where they’re most useful.
• JUnit and HTML reports link into Cloud. Each JUnit <testcase> carries cloud.runId and cloud.runUrl; the <testsuite> carries cloud.uploadId and cloud.url. The HTML report gains a per-flow “Maestro Cloud run” link and a linked upload id. Handy for CI, and for agentic workflows that heal tests from failure artifacts. Links are emitted only when both a project id and per-flow run id are present.
• JUnit timestamps and suite durations are schema-correct. Timestamps are truncated to whole seconds (yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss), and suite duration is wall-clock elapsed with a matching startTime, so CI tools that validate the JUnit schema parse the report cleanly.
• maestro cloud similar-device hint is copy-pasteable. The suggested local start-device command echoes the correct --device-os (e.g. android-34) and reflects back your --device-model when provided.

CLI output

• Consistent duration formatting. maestro test and maestro cloud both print whole-second durations for values over 1 second.

Full changelog: github.com/mobile-dev-inc/maestro/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md

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Update to 2.8.0

Update the Maestro CLI to get everything above:

curl -fsSL "https://get.maestro.mobile.dev" | bash