appium/docs/en/unicode.md

Multi-lingual Support

By default the automation tools for both iOS and Android do not support non-ASCII characters sent to editable fields through the keyboard.

iOS

Appium sends non-ASCII characters to iOS editable fields directly, bypassing the keyboard altogether. While this allows the text to be inputted in tests, it should be kept in mind that any business logic triggered by keyboard input will therefore not be tested.

One main caveat to this behavior is the encoding of the strings sent and received. Unicode also has the concept of “combining characters”, which are diacritical modifications of other characters. Rather than a single character representing what is seen, two (or more, in the case of heavily accented characters) separate characters are sometimes used to represent one, with the system overlaying them.

Thus, while in Unicode the letter é (Unicode's "LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE") can be encoded as a single letter, the iOS simulator will return the equally valid representation of the letter e followed by the accent, ́ ("COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT"). When this occurs a test may be reported but the expected and actual results will look exactly the same. The solution to this is to normalize the text before asserting on it.

var unorm = require('unorm');
var testText = unorm.nfd("é Œ ù ḍ");
driver
  .elementsByClassName('UIATextField').at(1)
    .sendKeys(testText)
    .text()
    .should.become(testText)
  .nodeify(done);

Android

Android tests allow for Unicode input by installing and using a specialized keyboard that allows the text to be passed as ASCII text between Appium and the application being tested.

In order to utilize this functionality, set the unicodeKeyboard desired capability is set to true. If the keyboard should be returned to its original state, the resetKeyboard desired capability should also be set to true. Otherwise Appium's Unicode keyboard will remain enabled on the device after the tests are completed.

Then tests can pass Unicode text to editable fields using send_keys.

var desired = {
  app: '/path/to/app',
  deviceName: 'Android Emulator',
  deviceVersion: '4.4',
  platformName: 'Android',
  unicodeKeyboard: true,
  resetKeyboard: true
};
var testText = 'é Œ ù ḍ';
driver
  .elementByClassName('android.widget.EditText')
  .sendKeys(testText)
  .text()
  .should.eventually.become(testText)
  .nodeify(done);